Gerth: Good riddance to what may be Louisville's last gravel road
Romania Drive is a relic.
It was built back in the day when the primary mode of transportation was still horseback — only one in 1,492 Americans had cars at the time — and unpaved roads were common.
But now it may be the only gravel road in Louisville’s public road system, and it’s about to see that distinction come to an end.
This is a story about how government can do things to help its citizens — even if takes more than a century to get it done.
Crews from the Metropolitan Sewer District showed up a couple weeks ago to fix drainage issues that cause the road to be pocked and rutted during heavy storms, and after they’re done, crews working for the city will start work on a modern, paved road built for cars and not surreys.
“Thank God it’s going,” Sue Payton said of the old gravel road.
Her husband, Ray Payton, has been trying to get the road paved ever since the Paytons moved in nearly four years ago.
He said his grandchildren can hardly ride their bikes on the street for all the dangerous ruts that can be 18 inches deep following a heavy rain. He can’t keep his cars clean for all the dust the road kicks up and recalled the day he was driving his convertible Mustang with the top down and came upon a garbage truck that was kicking up a huge cloud.
“We were completely engulfed,” he said. “You could taste the dust.”
One neighbor has almost wiped out on his motorcycle several times.
It’s taken a while to get the road built — not just from the time it was built, but from the time the city decided to accept the road into its road system more than a decade ago.
Sal Menendez, a spokesman for the Louisville Metro Public Works department, said the agency asked the Jefferson County Attorney’s office to take a look at the road back in 2013 to determine if the city was responsible for it.
That would have been years after Ray Payton said a former neighbor began complaining about the road and trying to get the county, and then after merger Louisville Metro, to pave it.
Up until then, the county would come by every now and again and dump a load of gravel, Payton said. Sometimes, after hard downpours, Payton said neighbors with grader attachments on trucks and tractors would try to fix the ruts.
The Jefferson County Attorney’s office finally decided in 2013 that the road was meant for public use and that the antiquated old road was, in fact, the city’s responsibility.
This wouldn’t happen like this now because the city requires people who subdivide property to pave streets before the city will accept them into the public road system. But that wasn’t the case in 1904.
When Jerry Babin moved in December, he knew what he was in for because he grew up on a gravel road in Louisiana. Expect lots of dust — and lots of ruts.
And when you drive on the road during heavy rains, avoid pooling water so your tire doesn’t get stuck in one of the holes. “You have to learn how to drive on a gravel road,” he said.
He’s looking forward to a smooth, black-topped road.
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Louisville Metro Council member Rick Blackwell has been working since 2014 to get something done about Romania Drive.
First, it was just getting public works to regrade the road.
That helped, but it didn’t solve the problem.
“There are drainage issues and they have had to do so several times since,” he said.
So, city officials began to look into building a modern road.
“It’s not like a regular repaving project,” said Blackwell, who guessed that a typical project this size – about 2,000 feet in length – would cost in the tens of thousands. “This will cost ten times that.”
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In fact, Jeff Brown, who heads the engineering division in public works, estimated in 2022 that it would cost $320,000 to pave it — and that was without the drainage improvements that were needed to make sure the road wouldn’t wash out with the first heavy rain.
And council members don’t get that much infrastructure money. Blackwell, for instance, gets $100,000 annually for his entire district.
Public works budgeted $185,300 in 2022 and another $135,000 was budgeted last year.
But they still weren’t ready to do the work because MSD wasn’t moving quite as quickly to fix the draining issues.
“It was all about getting everybody on the same page,” Blackwell said.
In May, MSD signed a contract to spend $196,000 to fix the drainage problems.
MSD began work in the middle of last month. Once it finishes, Melendez said the paving work will begin after the drainage work is completed but he didn’t have a date.
Blackwell can’t wait to get this finished so he can welcome the people who live in the 10 houses on Romania Drive into the 21st century.
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville's last gravel road is getting paved. It just took 120 years
