'Potholes big enough to bury a dog in ...'
Samuelson and Johnson unite to press ODOT about Jewell highways
By SANDRA SWAIN
The Daily Astorian
"Potholes big enough to bury a dog in." That's how Carolyn Eady, a former member of the Jewell School Board, described the condition of the two state highways, Oregon 202 and 103, that serve Jewell.
Yellow centerlines are missing and fog lines are nonexistent on roads so narrow that school buses run off the edge and their drivers warn each other by radio when big log trucks are coming around a curve.
Sgt. Dean Schroeder, of the Clatsop County Sheriff's Office, said the roads around Jewell present a safety hazard for law enforcement officers as well, and their poor condition increases wear and tear on their vehicles.
Commissioner Ann Samuelson, who is also a Jewell School Board member, took local Oregon Department of Transportation officials on a bone-crunching, coffee-spilling bus ride a few weeks ago. They came through with money to patch the worst sections. Repairs will start at the end of this month.
But Samuelson wanted a more permanent fix. So she turned to state Sen. Betsy Johnson, and Johnson went straight to the top. She invited ODOT's director, Matthew Garrett, to come to Jewell School Thursday to meet with local leaders and see for himself.
It was his first trip "out in the field" since the state legislative session ended last month, Garrett said. He added he welcomes the opportunity to visit people in their communities.
"That's the way I learn as director," Garrett said.
Johnson said she is pleased that "the director of one of the top three users of state money comes out to meet folks" and said ODOT is more customer-service oriented under Garrett's leadership.
Samuelson agreed. "This isn't the face of ODOT from the past," she said, calling Garrett the "Wizard of Oz of ODOT."
But Garrett said as much as he would like to see the deteriorated Jewell-area highways completely reconstructed, there's no money for that in ODOT's budget. To tear up a road and put a whole new road in costs about $1.5 million a "lane-mile," or about $75 million to do Highway 202 and about $28 million to do Highway 103.
Just finding the $810,000 to pay for repaving the most deteriorated sections of 202 and 103 was very difficult, Garrett said, because the funding process is so competitive.
Two-inch overlays will be placed on 1.1 miles between mileposts 15.5 and 16.7 on Highway 202, which passes through Jewell on its way from Astoria to Vernonia; and on 6.6 miles of Oregon 103 between mileposts 2.4 and 9.0, to link up with 2.4 miles that has already been paved, to complete 103, which connects Jewell to U.S. Highway 26.
ODOT's maintenance budget "has been held flat, which means it's backing up," Garrett explained, and there's already an $800 million annual shortfall in the budget for maintaining existing highways. He said it would take a 30 cent increase in the gas tax just to get out of that hole. "The need truly outstrips the revenues," Garrett said.
Maintaining and improving Oregon's transportation system is vital to the economy as well as for safety, Johnson said, noting that a "huge volume of goods move by highway."
That's as true for loggers in Jewell as for businesses everywhere else.
"The longer it takes a log truck to get down the road, the less loads they can get that day," Samuelson said. "My concern is the safety of the truck driver, the safety of the person driving down the road with that truck driver and the production of getting those logs down that road, because that's money. Time is money," she said.
Johnson said ODOT and state lawmakers are stepping up efforts to develop partnerships and strategies to deal with transportation as a system rather than piecemeal. "Sometimes to advance the system it means people have to take a place in the queue instead of always pushing to be at the front of the line," Johnson said.
"I think as legislative momentum builds around putting together a transportation package for the 2008 session that it's going to be especially important that local government and the state work together to continue to talk about system improvements to move goods and people around and through Oregon in the most efficient, cost-effective way, because our economic well being depends on it," Johnson said.
Garrett agrees. "We've got one system (of roads). No one cares if it's a county or a city or a state road. They just want to get their family or their logs to get there safely.
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