Farmers in California are concerned with their state's dilapidated rural roads and say they are in dire need of repair. Rural roads in the nation's top agricultural region are not only used to move much o f the country's food, but also are traversed by motorists seeking shortcuts around the region's increasingly crowded highways.
According to The Road Information Program, or TRIP, a Washington D.C. based research group, rural traffic increased by 27 percent nationwide between 1990 and 2002 as urban sprawl encroached ever deeper into rural America. The Central Valley is no exception, with Fresno, Modesto and other valley cities expanding rapidly.
County authorities say they don't have the money to fix city streets, let alone country roads. To keep a road in good condition, it generally needs to be repaved every 20 years. Many Central Valley counties have repaving cycles of about 80 years.