Road doctor | The DOT's Phil Curtis troubleshoots transportation problems on Maine's byways
Photo/Bobbie Hanstein
Phil Curtis, a Maine DOT consultant, says the state needs to invest more money in its roads so the business community can safely move its products
The Road Ranger. Minister of Mud, Padre of the Path and his personal favorite, Deacon of the Ditch.
Phil Curtis has heard, and embraces, them all. Road commissioner for Somerset County, three-term legislator from Madison, a lay minister and, since 1990, a consultant with the community service division of the Maine Department of Transportation, Curtis has spent much of the past two decades traversing the state, lending his public works and road knowledge to municipalities from Kittery to Fort Kent. By his estimate, more than 300 towns and cities have requested his free help to solve a public works dilemma, drainage problem or road puzzle.
Given the distressing condition of many Maine roads and the shrinking funds to repair them, Mainebiz asked Curtis to share some of his thoughts about Maine’s roads and how businesses are affected by their conditions. An edited transcript follows.
Mainebiz: As I understand it, you’re under contract to the DOT as a consultant and make yourself available to any municipality that needs your help, your expertise. In essence you cover the whole state?
Curtis: Yes, I haven’t gotten to all 495 communities, but I’m going for it. I do a number of different workshops in a given year, such as snow removal, which I do six or eight of those, from one end of the state to the other with 25 to 40 individuals at each. And then I go out on service calls where someone has a problem and go out to visit them. I think I’ve had close to 300, maybe a little better, of those.
I put between 45,000 and 50,000 miles a year on my pickup truck. I’ve worn out four or five vehicles. Often I’m in one part of the state, say Wayne today, Orono tomorrow and South Berwick the next day. But I’ve met a lot of good people on the way.
How many miles of roadway are municipalities responsible for?
Well, for reference, there are about 23,000 miles of public roads in Maine and the Maine DOT concentrates on about 8,500. All the rest are municipal. So from those well-paved streets in downtown Bangor to the gravel roads out in the willywacks to no man’s land. We have to deal with them all and all a little differently.
What do you think the impact will be of the new pilot program to lift the weight restrictions on trucks on the interstate? Better for municipal roads, yes, now that the trucks won’t be diverted onto them?
Many of the municipal and secondary roads weren’t built to sustain thousand-ton loads. Many over time are having a negative impact simply from wheels rutting of the travel lanes.
It will be interesting to see what happens after a year. I don’t think one year will give them the information they want. I think they’ll need to monitor a section of repaved road, starting from a properly surfaced road for a reference point, and then go back in a year and measure the deterioration.
Are there any particular services needed to encourage new business?
Somewhat. I can give you an example of what happened in Madison. Backyard Farms [commercial greenhouse] was built on a town way. Knowing that the road wasn’t created for heavy trucks — and a lot of them — it changed the dynamics of that road. It changed the maintenance and rehab of that road. So what had typically been a cost of $150,000 per mile to rehab became $200,000-$300,000 per mile to get that road back up to the weight-by-capacity to carry those trucks. When that happens, you look at maintenance and that’s significantly different.
That’s where I can get involved. You need to know the base of the road — is it functioning properly? Is the design and engineering base sufficient to add structural strength to get the longevity out of them? It all comes back to money. You have to go back to town meeting and explore what you want for development. The same thing with new housing developments or a commercial gravel pit. All development takes a toll on roads.
Are there other issues for business?
The business world has to have a good, safe infrastructure system to move its products. We’re fortunate with the interstate system. From an operational standpoint, because we are shipping out product south and west to Boston and New York markets, a highway infrastructure is critical. We have to make that work, that link between municipal roads to major collector roads to arteries to highways.
From an expense standpoint, the bottom line is what impact is there on their tax base, and people watch that carefully.
With public works, the budget process is an interesting phenomenon. Most public works departments develop a one-sided budget, the expense side. My challenge is to try to get them to look at this from a different perspective. I say your job is to keep the roads open and safe. Your numbers are all expense numbers; it’s what you want. But if you had to build your budget up from revenue you had to earn, you’d develop your budget with a more concentrated eye.
In the real world, try putting your other hat on, as the taxpayer. Is this the most efficient, needs-based rather than wants-based budget you can come up with? Do I need that truck for $150,000? Can I work something similar for $100,000? That’s what the business world does.
If people are pressured to react and cut budgets you’ll see municipal people take a $250,000 road rebuild program and cut it to $200,000, and likely sacrifice quality in the process and shorten up the life expectancy of that road rebuild project. That’s short-sighted. You need to get the best return on the tax dollar invested.
Are they responsive to that way of thinking?
For the most part, yes. They realize they have to get their budgets by selectmen, or a city council. If they’re not careful, they will throw things in (to pad their budgets) that town meeting will reject, just to get the project they really want funded. That’s not fair.
Any guess on the future of material costs?
Asphalt is a petroleum product. In a ton of asphalt, 5% to 5-1/2% is liquid asphalt, but it becomes 30%-40% of the cost of the product. So it has a very high dollar impact on the price of laying a ton of hot mix on a road. We can’t control those costs.
Twenty years ago we were laying down pavement for $26 a ton. Two summers ago, it was $99 a ton. So you end up shortening projects, going a little bit longer before resurfacing that road. I’ve been seeing this on a municipal and DOT level. From a municipal standard, the average road replacement, or life cycle of a road, is 10-12 years before you come back and add another surface. If I push that beyond 12 years, to 14 or 15 years, my cost to bring that road back to a satisfactory level will be 75% higher than if I’d done it earlier.
The roads are deteriorating faster than we’re keeping up with them. We’re going to need more money, more of your money. [Laughs] Hey, could I ask your readers to include $10 dedicated for roads in their taxes next year?
Have you got any perennial trouble spots, stretches of road that give you a headache year in and year out?
If you go to town meeting, that’s easy. Everyone claims to have the worst stretch of road.
Our roads take a beating with the freeze-thaw cycle. There are three elements to make frost heaves: water, freezing temperatures and sponge-like soil. If I remove one of those elements, I remove the frost heaves. But I have no control over freezing temperatures or the soil mix, but I can control the water. That’s why I preach drainage, drainage, drainage. If there’s no water to freeze, I eliminate frost bumps and the deterioration of the road.
As road commissioner for Somerset County, I travel 60 miles in unorganized territory. On North Road, up near The Forks, and through those woods, normally it’s a 35-40 miles per hour gravel road. That was 10-15 miles per hour when I was there three weeks ago. Those frost heaves were deep and sharp. But by the end of April, the first of May, they’ll be back to normal on their own. It’s amazing, really.
Carol Coultas, Mainebiz editor, can be reached at ccoultas@mainebiz.biz.
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