Depending on what state you live in, a few or many of your streets are the responsibility of the Department of Transportation. In Virginia, whose DOT is famous for calling street trees “FHOs”—Fixed and Hazardous Objects20—almost every street is state property. In most states, however, it is just the ones that carry a lot of traffic. Unfortunately, this means that many American Main Streets are not controlled by the communities that rely on them, but by state engineers.
