Why tear up highway when nothing wrong?

I have been driving on Highway 395 between Minden and Carson City twice a day for a number of years and did not see anything (major) wrong with the road. Why did we spend millions tearing it up and re-surfacing it ?

I have heard everything from, "It was just a construction worker's welfare project" to "There was money in the budget that had to be spent." What a sad state of affairs if either of these is true. It seems that putting all that money into the bypass project would have made a lot more sense. Does anyone out there know why it was torn up ?