Roughly half of Lexington County’s roads are unpaved, and paving them will cost millions.

Lexington County Council has recently discussed plans to pave a significant portion of the county’s unpaved roads. The county currently has 606 miles of unpaved roads, with only 214 miles (or 315 roads) currently being considered for paving. There is no imminent timeframe to complete paving them.

The roads considered for paving are brought to the county via petition from the public.

Brent Hyatt, public works director for the county, told the Chronicle that with the current funding and right of way for the roads, it will take multiple lifetimes to complete paving all the roads. He added that the right of way alone will be one of the reasons some roads will remain unpaved.

The county is currently able to allocate $1 million annually to pave roads – an amount that can pave less than a mile due to costs to complete construction, engineering design, moving utilities and other factors, Hyatt said.

The total cost to pave all roads on the petition list is roughly $271 million.

“Reducing the dirt road mileage allows for higher frequency of maintenance on the remaining dirt roads,” Hyatt said, “and eliminates drainage problems, erosion problems, poor material like clay or sand from creating issues where vehicles get stuck or get washed away from excessive rainstorms.”

The director added that eliminating these problems offers a range of benefits and can help improve safety, efficiency and durability.

Since 2015, the county has been able to pave roughly 38 miles of unpaved roads.

Outside of paving the roads the director said the county is able to scrape the dirt roads once every six weeks, adding that repairs to dirt roads are completed in response to service requests from residents or property owners.

In November, residents of Lexington County voted against a 1% Capital Project Sales Tax, commonly referred to as the penny tax, that would have funded $530 million in road improvements, with $76,327,808 being budgeted for paving dirt roads.

Hyatt told the Chronicle that with another source of funding the county would be able to address more dirt roads and would be able to provide higher levels of service.

To manage projects and budgeting, the county refers to its transportation plan, which was updated in 2021. This plan lays out the priority ranking system that is used to rank dirt roads that have been petitioned. This list is updated as needed.

When ranking petitioned roads, the county looks at five main factors; the maintenance cost (based on average annual maintenance cost per mile and taken over a five year period), the number of homes located on the road, the daily traffic, if the road is utilized in a school bus route, and how long it has been on the petition list.