If anyone in our area needed a reminder that the efforts to maintain our state’s roadways has been ridiculously underfunded, all they had to do was listen to the discussions during last week’s Brooke County Commission meeting.

Commissioners were approached by a county resident who expressed continued concerns over the status of U.S. Route 22, which, despite various attempts at fixing its crumbling surface over the years, continues to present unevenness, with a variety of cracks, craters and bumps.

State Route 27, also known as Washington Pike, is another road of concern, with residents seeing it as being long neglected to the point that even a patching program set up for this year seems to have provided little relief.

Those are just two examples, but they are big ones given they are among the most heavily traveled roads by residents of the Tri-State Area.

It’s likely that anyone reading this can come up with at least a half dozen other examples of state roads in need of some type of improvement to better serve the motoring public.

The problem has and, most likely, will continue to be a lack of necessary funding.

According to reports from the commission meeting, officials have said the money needed to truly provide a fix for Washington Pike is more than our region is funded through the West Virginia Division of Highways.

The worse news is that, as has been reported several times in recent months, state officials have expressed concern about the state’s budget in the years ahead, meaning the chances of increased funds for many of our programs won’t be happening for some time.

Providing safe corridors of transportation should always be among the state’s priorities, no matter who is governor or who is a member of the Legislature.

There have been programs — including former Gov. Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity, several projects of which haven’t even started, let alone been completed — but it seems as if there might be no catching up to get roads in the Northern Panhandle where they need to be.