Our travels recently took us across the top of the state to the northwest corner. It’s been a few years since I’ve made that particular journey through the apple country and the honeytraps that have grown up along the roads blown open to accommodate the hordes of people intent on escaping the cities.
US Highway 76 and 515, soon after you leave Union County, shows the wear and tear of the passage of millions of tourons and their dollars, an estimated 5,000 vehicles per day throughout and 10,000 around Blue Ridge, GA. The surface of the highway is a rumbling patchwork of (mostly) filled potholes and sealed cracks that look like 40 miles of varicose veins. The uneven surface causes a roar and rumble at odds with the spirit of recreation marketed for the destinations along that route, and the vibration suggests that if I had to travel that route regularly, I would be spending some money on worn suspension and tires.
Closer to home, we’re in the grip of GRIP, the Governor’s Road Improvement Plan, a program hatched by the Georgia General Assembly in 1989 to establish a network of economic development highways designed to connect 95% of Georgia cities with populations over 2,500 to the Interstate Highway System and to place 98% of Georgia’s population within 20 miles of a four-lane highway.
Those of us who prefer to live as far away from a four-lane highway as possible tend to view the multi-billion dollar “If we build it, they will come” brand of taxpayer-funded programs with suspicion. The state of Georgia has consistently claimed positive economic benefits for the GRIP program, and the lure of wielding large sums of other people’s money has always transcended politics. The short-term benefits are undeniable. Construction creates jobs, and traffic affects economic growth.
However, while GRIP claims unemployment reductions and economic stimulus, a retrospective analysis of highway bypasses and widenings (including rural cases) found mixed results: some areas see temporary job gains during construction, but long-term employment growth is often negligible or offset by losses in local businesses displaced by traffic shifts or sprawl.
In Georgia, critics of similar projects (e.g., the Fall Line Freeway under GRIP) note they can destroy jobs in agriculture and tourism while providing significantly fewer permanent positions than claimed. Broader studies on rural highways indicate higher unemployment in disconnected areas, and widenings don’t always correlate with sustained reductions, especially if they exacerbate inequality (e.g., benefiting urban commuters over rural residents).
The Reason Foundation Annual Highway Report ranks Georgia’s roads 6th in the nation for 2025, up from 26th in 2020. Sadly, US roads score a D+ compared to roads in other developed countries, and some of the roads we’re building or resurfacing don’t last as long today as they did in times past.
There are several factors behind this perceived decline in quality: Construction costs have tripled, so some projects are underfunded. Climate change and increased traffic cause roads to wear out faster. A “paint it black” approach to temporarily fixing rural roads without addressing underlying issues is more common, and there has been a significant reduction in skilled labor among construction workers, with contractors reporting that 72% of new workers don’t meet basic job-readiness standards.
GRIP was established to promote economic growth and improve highway safety for predicted increases in traffic. As I vibrated across the top of Georgia, I didn’t feel any safer on the rutted and rumbling roads, but the data says I was. I had plenty of time to ponder the question sitting at traffic lights that interrupt the increased traffic between Blue Ridge and Ellijay. The legendary fruit merchants wanted over $50 for a basket of apples, and that’s about what lunch for two people costs in a tourist area, so on this particular trip we did not contribute to the economic growth of the area.
The hypnotic rumble of the rough roads did manage to facilitate a meditative state in which I came up with a new working definition for government: An organization that allows people with no skin in the game to make life-altering decisions for people they will never meet in places they don’t live, and to use the people’s own money to do it.
Outside The Box 