Thank you, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, for writing about local access roads, public roads under county jurisdiction that the county does not maintain.

Homeowners along these roads are asking for basic fairness. They pay the same transportation taxes that fund road maintenance as neighbors on county-maintained roads, and many live on roads that look and function exactly the same. Yet their taxes have helped maintain other county roads for decades while their own roads were excluded.

They also face potential liability exposure. If someone is injured because of road conditions, homeowners could potentially be sued — yet according to State Farm, homeowners’ insurance does not cover public roads. Private citizens should not bear liability for public assets.

While Lane County reportedly has 124 miles of local access roads, the 12 miles within Eugene’s urban growth boundary are different. More than 1,100 households are located on these mostly paved neighborhood streets that carry urban traffic and are part of a larger transportation network. These are public roads used by the broader community, and allowing them to fail would impact the entire community.

County staff has suggested accepting these roads could require tens of millions of dollars in upgrades. But homeowners aren’t asking for rebuilt “first-class” roads with features many existing county roads don’t have, and they aren’t otherwise asking for special treatment. They are asking for their roads to be accepted and maintained like other public roads, with improvements prioritized fairly as funding allows.

Lane County commissioners have the opportunity to right a decades-old wrong by accepting these roads into the county system without creating huge new barriers or costs for the homeowners who were left behind.

Please sign our petition urging commissioners to accept these roads into the county road system: www.LARsinEugene.com.

Laura Shoe
Linda Lovick
Joel Korin
Eugene