ELKHART — We've all noticed rising gas prices when we fill up our cars. But now drivers may notice it on the way back home. The high price of oil and asphalt means fewer roads will get paved this year.

"We have been hearing for the last 3 years that it was going to be done,” Kathy Graber told WSBT News.

Graber is talking about paving the stretch of County Road 20 that runs past her rural Goshen home. She says it could use an overhaul.

“It’s fading on the sides and the edges and there on down, most of it is patched all the way across and so it’s extremely bumpy to drive on,” she said.

Her wish has been answered — it will be paved this summer.

It’s one of the projects that won't be scaled back because of rising costs of doing paving work.

“The increase of the costs of materials — asphalt is up this year — fuel prices and our budget constraints,” explained Rick Easton with the County Highway Department. “We'll try to do about 16 miles of road [paving] this year. […] That's below average this year.”

Last year they were able to pave around 27 miles when costs were lower. That’s out of 830 miles of road for which they are responsible.

He says optimistically the county would like to do up to four times as much in the way of road paving projects this summer. But for now it’s just not in the cards.

“In a perfect world we'd like to do at least 80 miles of road a year; there's no way to do that — that's about one tenth of the roads,” Easton said. “It’s just the cost of fuel and the materials have gone up and that’s what’s caused a crunch.”

Even so, Kathy Graber is happy her county road will be getting some attention.

Elkhart County also planned to pave several gravel roads this year, but because of budget constraints, they won't be able to.