I live in rural KS. We afford our roads in rural areas by purposely not paving them. Maintenance of gravel roads in the East and dirt roads in the West is accom

I live in rural KS. We afford our roads in rural areas by purposely not paving them. Maintenance of gravel roads in the East and dirt roads in the West is accomplished by running a road grader down them every few months. There are paved county roads every 5 to 10 miles. These are generally only chip and sealed every 3 to 5 years, not repaved, and are not smooth. Every 15 to 25 miles there is a paved state road. Even many of them lack shoulders, leaving nowhere to stop in emergencies and causing semis to roll when they catch the edge of the road. Even for those of us in town, UPS and FedEx packages are generally coated in dirt upon arrival. The one benefit is the low cost of maintenance. Long term, the cheapest roads are in older towns that still have brick streets. Some are a 100 years old and have nearly zero maintenance. They are slick and noisy. On a side note, we have hundreds of miles of gravel roads to bike. We even have an internationally attended event called the Dirty Kanza.