Thousands of years ago the ancient Romans created the first real large mature civilization.
They did this primarily based on the development of the worlds first large scale infrastructure.
Their engineers brought running water to the cities, sewers to homes, and most importantly they built a massive road structure that connected the far reaches of the empire from England to Iraq.
The Romans realized that roads were the equivalent of a human circulatory system.
All vital trade, materials, military needed to quickly and safely move throughout the empire. Without a sophisticated road network it would have been impossible for the Empire to survive.
Anyone who makes the uncomfortable daily drive across Barrie, perhaps multiple times, can attest to the fact that our road system, our city’s arteries, is broken.
One can literally drive from one end of the city to the other and not find a road that isn't riddled with potholes, crevasses and debris.
The effect of this is on our economy is significant. Delivery vehicles will take longer to get goods in and out, they will break down more often and cost more in maintenance and fuel to operate thus affecting prices and profitability.
Some courier services actually charge more to deliver to certain areas known to have poor road infrastructure.
A study done by pothole.info concluded that a company with 100 vehicles will experience 200 lost hours to bad roads and resulting slow traffic will experience a $1.2 million a year loss. People will become less interested in travelling around town on their free time to do their shopping because of the irritation of driving on the roads that get them there.
We all avoid roads we know to be in famously poor condition. In Barrie the number of roads in poor condition is epidemic.
Our city’s arteries are sick and need help.
For more than ten years the City of Barrie has been aware of a significant infrastructure deficit and has been taking measures to mitigate the damage but as time wears on our infrastructure gets worn.
Road maintenance and infrastructure are a difficult thing for many politicians to prioritize.
Fixing roads and sewers is not at the forefront of most voters minds until their car is damaged by a huge pothole or the water comes out of the tap brown - by that time it’s usually too late and exponentially more expensive to fix.
The Roman Empire fell because it wasn't able to maintain its infrastructure and had its road networks cut off by the Barbarian hordes.
The fact is that at some point we will either pay the price for having roads in terrible condition or pay the price to repair and maintain them, the latter is how we will keep our own little empire from falling, lets hope our elected officials at every level have the fortitude to get it done.
