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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. One of the underappreciated joys of living in our community is how many wonderful and scenic back roads we have: miles and miles of twisty, turny roads that unveil amazing rural and wilderness areas. That is, of course, until you turn onto one of these roads and sink into a pothole the size of a freezer. For many of these rural roads in Lane County, no one, no municipality or government, is coming to fix them. Today on the show, you'll hear from a reporter who traveled these roads and talked to the citizens who have to live with them. In the second part of the show, you'll hear from a finance professor at the University of Oregon, who will explain to a financial Luddite, me, what the recent trillion-dollar SpaceX IPO means for all of us. Ben Botkin is a government reporter for The Lookout: Eugene Springfield. Ben, thanks so much for coming in and talking with us.
Ben Botkin: Thanks for having me.
Dunne: I enjoyed reading your story titled "Miles of Lane County roads are in a no man's land." Tell folks generally about what you found.
Botkin: Throughout Lane County, you have stretches of roads that are essentially orphans. These are roads that no agency claims ownership of, even though they are technically public roads that have existed for a long time. As homes have developed around them, more homeowners are going to the county and saying, "We need our roads fixed. We want you to take care of these." But the county says these roads have never been within its jurisdiction, leaving homeowners to decide: if I want this public road fixed, I'm going to be the one who has to fill the potholes, or even put down a layer of chip seal.
Dunne: One of my first questions is whether you know who built the roads in the first place. Were they county roads at one time?
Botkin: Not county roads in the sense that the county had jurisdiction over them. Each road's story is a little different, but you may have a situation where a simple road goes off to one house and the county never claims jurisdiction over it. Then, over decades, more houses get built around it, and suddenly this road that was once serving just a house or two is connected at either end and being used by multiple vehicles. These roads were never county roads, but their situation evolved over time, raising more concerns about how they're going to be maintained.
Dunne: When you were doing this story, give us an audio picture. How bad did some of them look?
Botkin: It really varies from road to road. One block I looked at in the River Road neighborhood had a pothole that a neighbor has been filling himself. There are also roads in the Blue River area that the county doesn't maintain. Some are gravel, some still have a layer of blacktop. These roads are not concentrated in one community. They're in places like the River Road neighborhood of Eugene and in rural areas. Lane County is somewhat unusual in that its urban growth area has more local access roads than other Oregon counties typically do. They're primarily a rural phenomenon statewide, but in Lane County there are more in urban areas.
Dunne: I know you talked to some folks along the way. Beyond the inconvenience of potholes and cracks on your car, was there concern about safety? For example, if there was a fire, would larger vehicles, police vehicles, fire vehicles, be able to access these roads?
Botkin: The roads I saw are currently accessible. The real concerns are long term. Without maintenance, roads will deteriorate and become a much more expensive problem. Now, if a road does become impassable, the county would be legally permitted to take ownership of it, but that hasn't been the case with the roads in question. There are 124 miles of them in Lane County.
Dunne: We are a big county. Talk about some of the people you spoke with who live there and the challenges they've had to deal with.
Botkin: The general scenario I heard over and over is that someone moved in a few years ago, didn't realize they were on a local access road, and then something went wrong with the road. They go to the county, and that's when they find out: you live on a local access road, and you're responsible for it. Then they're faced with, OK, what's the solution? Are several neighbors on one block going to pool money and fix the road, or are they just going to let it go? That's generally how it unfolds.
Dunne: You've mentioned local access roads. Is that a specific designation, and is that one of the main reasons why no one is coming out to fill those potholes?
Botkin: "Local access road" is a legal term. It refers to a road that no agency, whether the county, a city in Lane County, or ODOT, claims ownership of. For a road to become part of the county road system, there's a fairly lengthy, complex process that would have to unfold.
Dunne: In your reporting, did you get a chance to talk to leadership at the county? What might a county commissioner say about this issue? I imagine they get letters, calls and emails from people asking for help.
Botkin: There's definitely a lot of sympathy among county commissioners. One commissioner mentioned that when he first heard about the problem, he thought people were complaining about their long private driveways, but then he investigated and realized these actually are public roads. From the county's standpoint, there are a couple of issues. Maintaining roads is very expensive, and the county's budget is already very tight. There's also a legal process required to bring a road into the county system. That said, officials are looking for long-term solutions. They're exploring conversations with the city of Eugene about roads in the Eugene area, and looking at whether there are technical ways to make it easier for property owners to get a road adopted into the county system. Currently that process requires approval from a majority of landowners along a stretch of local access road, so there are real barriers.
Dunne: For the folks who live with this and are fixing their own potholes, is that an expensive proposition? Is it something anyone can do, or is there real expertise involved? I personally have no experience filling potholes.
Botkin: Filling potholes is relatively simple, but it's not a long-term solution. If you keep patching potholes, eventually the underlying foundation of the road is going to crumble, and you're left with nothing. The concern is bigger than just filling a hole. It's about how can my road's long-term lifespan be preserved before it turns to gravel in another decade or two. I'd also point out that homeowners along local access roads are not asking for special treatment. They're not asking for their roads to be fixed before anyone else's. They recognize that the county has limited resources. They just want their roads to be part of the same system that other Lane County roads are in.
Dunne: One last safety question. We're talking in June, approaching fire season. Some of these local access roads might be important in terms of fighting fires. Is that another safety issue, especially in rural areas?
Botkin: Certainly, it could be. Local access roads are public roads that emergency vehicles can access, and if there are life safety issues or natural disasters affecting roads, the county has the legal ability to step in and address the situation. There is an awareness of local access roads, and I think it's an issue that officials will be watching in the months and years ahead.
Dunne: My last question is about pulling the lens out more broadly, since you cover government. Is this indicative of the county's budget challenges? Is this a showcase of how the county is in something of a financial bind?
Botkin: It's definitely one example of how expensive infrastructure can be. Just for a portion of the roads, the local access roads in the Eugene area and in Blue River, the estimated cost to survey and bring them up to code is more than $90 million. That's not a cheap proposition. Though it's worth noting that estimate is based on bringing roads up to modern standards with curbs, gutters and culverts that local property owners aren't necessarily advocating for. Those standards often didn't exist when these roads were originally built.
Dunne: He's Ben Botkin, a government reporter for Lookout Eugene Springfield. Ben, really appreciate your time. Thanks so much.
Botkin: Thank you.
Dunne: Now let's go to school on initial public offerings. Today's class is all about SpaceX and the trillion-dollar hype. Yuchi Yao is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Oregon. Professor, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.
Yuchi Yao: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Big fan of the show.
Dunne: Generally speaking, the SpaceX IPO was enormous and made huge headlines, with a number almost staggering to comprehend. But some folks are saying it may have been overhyped. From your perspective as someone who studies this, what did you see with the SpaceX IPO?
Yao: It's a great question. The SpaceX IPO is huge. The company went public at an offer price of $135. It sold 5% of its entire company, raising $75 billion in total, which gives the company a valuation of roughly more than $2 trillion. It's one of the biggest, maybe the single biggest, IPO of all time. I think two things here can both be true. First, SpaceX can be a great company, but its price may largely depend on what the future holds. SpaceX is a real company with real businesses. Take rocket launches: in 2025, SpaceX accounted for roughly 40% of total launches globally. In the U.S. alone, it's probably 80 to 90%. Another strong business is Starlink, its communication satellite network, which is even more dominant. Roughly 90% of all satellites currently running in near orbit are from Starlink. I checked this morning, and here in Eugene, for $55 a month, you can get 100 megabytes per second internet just about anywhere, including hiking trails or mountain areas where you have poor cell reception. So it is a real company with a great business. But the price is a separate question. At a $2 trillion valuation, we typically use revenue as a benchmark in finance. Looking at 2025 revenue, that $2 trillion valuation is roughly 90 to nearly 100 times revenue. And SpaceX reported a net loss of $5 billion. So what the market is pricing in is not what SpaceX is doing today. The market sees a very ambitious, very optimistic future for the company's growth.
Dunne: That all makes sense to me. What I'm still grappling with, based on coverage in The New York Times and other publications, is this: it seems like SpaceX jumped the line. As I understand it, for a company to end up in a lot of index funds or 401(k)s or pension plans, it typically has to spend a couple of years demonstrating profitability. Is SpaceX not having to wait that long? It seems like it could become part of our 401(k)s and pension plans whether we want it to or not. Can you explain that?
Yao: What could happen is this: many of us, if we choose to hold stocks in our retirement plan, invest in something called an index fund. The index fund's job is not to pick stocks; it copies and pastes an index. An index can include many stocks. The most standard one is the S&P 500, which tracks the 500 biggest stocks listed in the United States. If SpaceX one day gets included in that index, then our 401(k) plan will hold SpaceX, not directly, but indirectly, because we are following that passive asset fund. This doesn't mean our fund manager thinks SpaceX is a great or bad company. It's simply because it's included in the passive index fund.
Dunne: So if SpaceX does well, index funds will do well. But if the speculation about SpaceX doesn't come true, could that be a challenge for a lot of these index funds and 401(k)s? Is that correct?
Yao: I would treat it as two separate things. In our retirement plan, we don't directly hold just one single stock. Instead, we hold an index, like the S&P 500, which covers 500 of the biggest companies in the entire market. Common names in that index include Walmart, Coca-Cola, Visa, JPMorgan and Nvidia. We hold a tiny fraction of each. Even the biggest holding, like Nvidia, is less than 8% of the index. Because SpaceX only sold 5% of its total shares, the tradable share is just 5%. So even if SpaceX one day enters the S&P 500, its weight would be roughly 0.2%, meaning that for every $1,000 invested, only about $2 would be in SpaceX. That won't be a huge fraction of anyone's portfolio. And because we are invested in so many different stocks across different industries, any risk specific to SpaceX gets diluted. So it's not a major concern either way, because other holdings can offset whatever happens with SpaceX.
Dunne: He is Yuchi Yao, assistant professor of finance at the University of Oregon. Professor, really appreciate you explaining this and spending time with us. Thank you so much.
Yao: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll talk with the state's top veterinarian and learn about a cattle disease spreading in some states and what Oregon is doing to keep it from arriving here. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
