MORGANTOWN — It would have been easy to say, “We told you so.”
Members of the Monongalia County Commission chose not to do so Wednesday when asked about recently released transportation infrastructure data that claimed major roads in the greater Morgantown area are in worse condition than roads in any other urban area in West Virginia.
The report, issued Tuesday by national transportation research nonprofit organization TRIP, stated Morgantown has a higher percentage of “poor” roads and a lower percentage of “good” roads than any of the state’s other population centers — by a lot.
It didn’t come as a surprise.
That’s been the claim for years.
And frustration built over those years as local officials have gone back and forth with Charleston questioning why it would allow one of its few prosperous areas of growth to be hamstrung with broken down roads.
It would have been easy to say, ‘We told you so.’
They didn’t.
“The caution here is the fact that we’ve got a new administration, and we’ve got a new [transportation] secretary who seems keenly interested, both him and the governor from what I understand, in trying to address our area more than it’s been addressed in the past,” Commissioner Sean Sikora said.
“So, was this information helpful? It was certainly helpful. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. So, at least this report kind of standardizes the roads across the state and points to areas where they need to be addressed, but I would stop short of any criticism because I know that just in the past couple months the effort to move forward and address some of our issues has increased with warp speed,” he said.
Commissioner Tom Bloom, who as recently as late 2023 lamented, “I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this,” when discussing the DOH’s handling of area road concerns, said the report did validate a lot of past frustration.
“The only good news there is it validates what we have been saying for years. We’re the economic engine of the state, and I believe there’s been a whole change in attitude to reflect that. It isn’t going to change overnight because this has been building for years,” Bloom said. “I have to agree with Sean. There’s been a real change in the effort to work together on these problems. We believe the comments made by the new secretary of transportation, that he wants to start putting funds in areas where it will pay for itself, were about north central West Virginia and Monongalia County.”
Morgantown Communications Director Brad Riffee said the conditions reported by TRIP are not surprising.
“Many of the roads in poor condition fall outside of our jurisdiction. City streets are maintained because we actively address them,” Riffee said, noting the city is evaluating the condition of its streets and intends to release its own detailed report in the coming months. “Our commitment remains focused on maintaining our roads and ensuring safe travel for everyone.”
According to Brent Walker, executive director of public relations for the West Virginia Department of Transportation, the state uses tools like the TRIP report along with internally-produced data to improve its decision making process.
“It is this new administration’s desire to focus on areas of need, especially those that are growing like Morgantown. We have a number of projects that have been initiated in the Morgantown area and will continue to do more projects as we are able to fund them,” Walker told The Dominion Post. “It is our desire to lower the amount of roads in poor condition and raise the amount of good roads not only in Morgantown, but all over the state, by focusing and recommitting to maintaining the assets — roads and bridges — we have today.”
TRIP’s full report, “Keep West Virginia Moving Forward,” is available at tripnet.org.
