The Star Tribune writes about: Making a rural comeback: The old gravel road
Finally some realism and responsibility about resurfacing rural roads:

With maintenance costs included, engineers have often used a rule of thumb that a road needs 150 to 200 cars a day, or the equivalent in heavy-weight traffic, to be worth paving.
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To tear up a thinly paved road and add some new gravel, Ridenour said, costs his county about $5,000 a mile. Resurfacing can run about $100,000.
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“I’d rather have concrete, but it’s just so expensive,” [Tony Monat] said. “And really, why should everybody in the rest of the county help pay for my hard surface road?”