Preface. The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.
Many of these roads should have never been paved to begin with, but the costs of construction, asphalt, and energy were so cheap it was done anyway. Now many rural roads are past their design life and rapidly deteriorating, especially in the Midwest from enormously heavy trucks taking corn and soybeans to biorefineries. It is both difficult and expensive to maintain them, and dangerous to let these roads fall apart and degrade into gravel on their own.
For more drainage/less flooding, wildlife, trees, and more plants, concrete and asphalt are being removed from parking lots, driveways, parking lots and more. Depaving can also keep sewage and other pollutants from washing off of concrete into waterways. Portland has had a depave group since 2008. It’s good for the climate too (Baraniuk 2024).
Source: Salt Lake Tribune.