How good are American roads?

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-good-are-american-roads

by chmaynard • 2 years ago

252 472 2 years ago

I heard a civil engineer make a claim once that the dust on the side of the road is about 300% more laden with precious metals like platinum, than random mining. I suppose this is all roads and not just American roads, though.

mikepurvis4• 2 years ago

Isn’t it supposed to be mostly brake pads, rotors, and tire rubber?

Would be fascinating to imagine it being economically viable to vacuum up and reprocess it, but based on the above I’ve assumed it was worthless.

alt2272• 2 years ago

Sounds a bit like the guys that collect the sludge from the sewers in jewellery and gold smithing districts in cities, then pan it for gold. Its not going to make anyone rich, but theres enough gold dust in there to buy some food and shoes for somebody hungry enough to dive into a sewer and collect sludge!

genter• 2 years ago

Dust from the catalytic converter. I've heard of gangs in LA taking shopvacs to the shoulder of the freeway at night.

olyjohn4• 2 years ago

Yes, it's copper and other metals used in the brake pads, as well as tire dust. Rotors are mostly just cast iron, so I'm not sure how bad that is.

gothroach• 2 years ago

Cody's Lab did a video with some experiments collecting and refining road dust. As I recall, he did manage to obtain a small bead of platinum-group metals but it didn't appear to be economically viable at least at a small scale.

xyst• 2 years ago

The US has the largest road network in the world, about 4.3 million miles of road, and Americans drive much more than residents in most other countries

This is insane. This just proves how entrenched this country is in car centric transportation. We spend trillions in building, subsidizing, and maintaining this infrastructure. Only for this cycle to repeat itself in 25 years as the roads/highways breakdown and people move further out (induced demand). Then there’s the billions in lost productivity due to traffic. Significant decrease in activity and increase in obesity.

Then the increased emissions from vehicles result in poor air quality. Then there is decreasing water and food quality as tire and brake particles make its way into the water and food supplies.

O5vYtytb3• 2 years ago

You're right that car centric transportation is entrenched, but this is the wrong statistic to prove that point. The US is a huge country and the overall density of roads (km/100km2) is lower than Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw...

trgn• 2 years ago

man is measure of all things. its density of people is lower too.

arethuza2• 2 years ago

Europe isn't a country though - difficult to do a comparison as a about 40% of Europe is the European part of Russia which has a much lower road density than the US, mind you European Russia is going to be the part that has the highest road density of that country.

bluGill13• 2 years ago

You should compare EU to the US before you comment on roads. The US is much larger than any EU country and so of course we will have a lot more roads.

hammock• 2 years ago

Couldn’t driving more be a sign of a strong and productive economy? Other large countries like Russia or Australia or something that drive less have smaller GFP as well.

Can we make a better comparison of how much Americans drive, plus total travel, vs total travel for other countries of similar density and size?

PittleyDunkin3• 2 years ago

I imagine you'd have to weigh this against alternative forms of transit. The freight rail industry is the largest in the world and directly represents (presumably productive) economic activity. Personal transit makes up a much larger percentage of road usage, even in metro areas with healthy public transit. It's hard not to see this as some form of inefficiency.

swatcoder• 2 years ago

For your critique, you'd want to break out urban+suburban road networks from regional and rural ones. The US was a frontier country that grew on top of continent-spanning trails with pockets of community cropping up everywhere there were agricultural, material, or strategic resources, or the need for a travel rest. It's to be expected that we have many miles of road and mostly a good thing that our communities are so well-connected and traversable.

It's what happens inside those communities, when they could be designed with better concern for local community or sustainability, that warrants the critique. And it's a good and fair critique. Just not one directly spoken to by the quoted statistic.

MiguelVieira• 2 years ago

The National Forest Service alone maintains 265,000 miles of roads.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/infrastructure/ro...

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

This just proves how entrenched this country is in car centric transportation

How? We’re big, rich and sparsely populated. I’m not saying that means we must have this system. But the longest road network doesn’t prove that’s wrong.

XorNot2• 2 years ago

This is called an "Argument from Incredulity" and it's a fallacy. Pointing to a large number without any basis of comparison does not make any statement about whether it is too large or too small. You also have billions of cells in your body! Is that too many?

jameshart• 2 years ago

This is a great analysis but it does focus exclusively on ‘roughness’, which is obviously important but isn’t the be-all-end-all of road quality.

One area I notice in particular that roads in the northeast US subjectively feel worse than Europe is in quality of road markings. Constant plow scraping and harsh salting seems to destroy markings.

I think it also shows up in the overall fit and finish of road infrastructure - edging and barriers, signage, lighting, maintenance of medians, how curbs and furniture contribute to junction legibility… and of course bridges.

One major reason is that European countries typically have national road agencies and consistent standards across the country (because, generally, smaller and less federal). US’s patchwork of federal, state and local road maintenance leads to vastly different budgets and department priorities across the network.

eqvinox2• 2 years ago

I generally agree but need to point out Germany is organised like the US regarding road construction. Only Autobahnen and Bundesstraßen are under federal authority, with states and municipalities divvying up the rest.

gattilorenz• 2 years ago

Same in Italy (and probably most other EU countries); there's (about 25.000km of) roads that are maintained by a state agency; others are managed by a region, a province or a city. There's also an entirely different agency that needs to take care of highways.

ajmurmann4• 2 years ago

But the regulations in Germany are largely federal, no?

HdS84• 2 years ago

Just FYI, at least germanies rods are also a patchwork. E.g. there are the Autobahns, which are financed by the federal state. Than there are Bundesstraßen (Yellow markings, typically something like B56) which are also financed by the federal state.

Then there are Landstraßen, which are financed by the Bundesland (state, LXXX). Followed by Kreisstraßen, financed by the Gemeinde (county?`).

Finally there are Gemeindestraßen, financed by the city or town.

There are lots of norms and regulations on how to build these roads, so there is not that much variance except layout. E.g. a bike friendly city like Münster has a dfiferent layout than say Cologne.

ajmurmann4• 2 years ago

I think your last paragraph is the key one. AFAIK in the US a lot less is regulated on a federal level. Like in Oregon you'll rarely see reflectors on the lane markings whereas they are omnipresent in some other states.

mannykannot3• 2 years ago

While I agree on your additional criteria, I feel the roughness metric itself (at least as explained here) is not as informative as it could be: a generally smooth road surface with sudden discontinuities in level (e.g.potholes) seems qualitatively worse (and damaging) than would be a smoothly-varying one with the same roughness. Perhaps an alternative metric might be based on the maximum speed at which a typical car or truck could travel without experiencing vertical accelerations above a certain threshold? ('typical', here would be with regard to things like its mass, suspension travel and stiffness, and wheelbase.)

wubrr2• 2 years ago

The metric might already account for the scenario you bring up, since a road with potholes will be more 'rough' than a smoothly varying one based on my understanding of this metric.

js22• 2 years ago

The reflectivity of the road markings in North Carolina—where plows are rarely used—is terrible, to the point that they are almost invisible on a rainy night, even on freshly painted roads. It's the worst of anywhere I've lived or driven in the U.S.

Relatedly, recently my wife mentioned seeing a vehicle with large boxes on each side and wondering what they were. From her description, I tracked down that they are a fleet maintained by a small company that measures road marking reflectivity:

https://www.beckenterprises.com/services/

So who knows, maybe NC is finally doing something about the road markings here.

tdeck2• 2 years ago

What an interesting niche business! I love that the Software section of their homepage appears to be a screenshot of WordPress template source code.

sumtechguy• 2 years ago

In NC it really depends on where you live. With some of them looking very nice. While others it looks like it has not been touched in 20 years. I personally think they just have a set timeframe to refresh things and they stick rigidly to that no matter how good or bad they are.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 2 years ago

Interesting, they're not that far from me. I love these little niche industries that no one's heard of. I guess they have to travel a lot to get enough business though.

nkrisc• 2 years ago

Ah, very cool, and great timing. I saw one the other day and was wondering what it was measuring (I assumed).

CoopaTroopa• 2 years ago

You have a good point. I live in Michigan and recently traveled down to Austin, Texas. The roads didn't seem all that much better but all of the road markings really stuck out to me. Reflectors in all the lines separating lanes, soft bollards surrounding cross walks and parking areas, extra curbs built in for bike lanes. It makes things look a lot nicer but my first thought was, "could you imagine trying to plow around those bollards, or those reflectors would get ripped up on the first pass."

16594470912• 2 years ago

Austin didn't even have snow plows until 2022, the year after snowmageddon. If I remember correctly, they tried using road graders and sand. Even then, it's generally ice, not snow in central tx, even after removing snow in 2021 there isn't/wasn't much to do about all the ice.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

Northern Europe gets more than enough snow and bollards and reflectors are a thing all the same. It's not a problem if you plan for it ahead of time and design and build things with that in mind.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

For what it’s worth I hate the roads and parking in Europe. Roads are narrow, intersections are chaotic and parking is a joke. I drove around Europe for around 3 months (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium etc.) and longed to drive back in the US again.

DrBrock• 2 years ago

This feels like it's supposed to sound like a bad thing. I think it's awesome the cities you went to were designed for the people who actually live in those cities, not the people driving through.

switch0074• 2 years ago

Yeah in Europe you want to head for the main train stations or Park and Rides if you're spending time in cities. They usually have large car parks and good public transport.

Outside of towns and cities the road networks in those countries are generally excellent. Especially in France and Italy with their toll roads.

If you're just going city to city, take the train.

I've driven extensively in Spain and to a lesser extent France, Italy and Germany and never found parking a "joke" except in cities or with a huge car. Of course, due to density, the free parking places are usually very busy and hectic. But there's always an option to pay/pay more

the_mitsuhiko• 2 years ago

Probably comes down to what you are used to. I find driving in the US stressful mostly because of other drivers not behaving like I’m used to.

salynchnew3• 2 years ago

Perhaps the best roads are those that see the least vehicular traffic.

devilbunny2• 2 years ago

If you find those roads narrow, don't try the UK or (especially) Ireland.

I've driven in France, Iberia, and Central/near Eastern Europe (Stuttgart to Budapest, Krakow, and back). City streets can be small, but the highways are highways. Even smaller roads in Slovakia weren't bad. Honestly didn't seem that different from driving in the US except that obedience to speed limits was a lot higher (though their limits are generally higher, so there's no real need to speed - 130 km/h is just over 80 mph, which is usually as fast as I would want to drive anyway).

richiebful1• 2 years ago

I honestly loved driving in France...once I realized that parking somewhere near transit (usually at the end of a tram line) was a heck of a lot better than driving my car around in the centre. Outside of the cities, intersections were great (primarily roundabouts), the freeways and tollways were impeccable, and people generally drove well

miles_matthias• 2 years ago

Well then there's the overall experience using the roads, regardless of roughness. For example, Texas' under interstate turnarounds are super weird and make running a local errand feel like a cross country trip as an example. Areas without zoning laws between commercial / residential feel more stressful to me as a driver personally too.

insane_dreamer3• 2 years ago

focus exclusively on ‘roughness’

also, as a road cyclist I've found that there are different types of paved roads, some are very smooth (asphalt I presume), and others are less so (concrete?). Both are paved, but one is much more pleasant to ride on than the other. I don't know if there is a relationship between roughness and durability or quality, or those are just different techniques.

Dah00n• 2 years ago

Constant plow scraping and harsh salting

We have no problems with that here in Scandinavia. Also, salt is not used in very cold areas as it doesn't work.

European countries typically have national road agencies and consistent standards across the country

(I'm guessing you meant EU, since the largest country in Europe is Russia.) We have EU wide standards in the EU.

vinay4272• 2 years ago

Most very cold areas are frequently above the temperature where salt is still somewhat effective, although I assume less than ideal.

I'm guessing you meant EU, since the largest country in Europe is Russia.

They mentioned country-wide standards in European countries, not EU-wide standards (and the EU doesn’t dictate most road standards as far as I’m aware.)

mikepurvis4• 2 years ago

I bet the proportion of unpaved roads would look a lot less bad if it was done by lane-miles rather than road-miles.

kube-system9• 2 years ago

Of course, nearly all roads with >2 lanes in the US are paved. But that doesn't tell us anything other than the fact that we have the money to pave roads that are frequently traveled.

zip12342• 2 years ago

Truly, we have so many underutilized overly wide roads. Simply removing lanes makes money go much further

O5vYtytb3• 2 years ago

Amazing that Minneapolis tops the city road quality chart, despite having the harshest winters. Do southern cities not build their roads so robustly? Or are they not maintained?

bluGill13• 2 years ago

I'm guessing not maintained. Minneapolis is forced to spend a lot more on roads just to keep things acceptable. They also have a lot of voters with a memory of how bad things get after a bad winter and so politicians don't dare short road funding let they be voted out over a few potholes. (I've seen roads in Minneapolis that were more pothole than surface)

gorfian_robot• 2 years ago

the south is generally a poor region with terrible public sand social services

O5vYtytb3• 2 years ago

3 of the bottom 4 cities are in California.

cactacea• 2 years ago

Do southern cities not build their roads so robustly? Or are they not maintained?

Yes

edwhitesell• 2 years ago

Maintenence. I grew up in the north (Michigan) and spent time in Massachusetts, living in Texas now it's very different how infrastructure is funded. I'd call it a result of the general politics, no one wants to spend money on infrastructure.

I believe the latest stat I heard was that over 70% of the roads & alleys in the city where I live are >40 years old. That also means all of the infrastructure under the roads (water, conduits, etc.) are also >40 years old.

firesteelrain2• 2 years ago

Not all Southern states.

Florida is an outlier in road quality both anecdotally and from this page - almost equal in quality to blue states of New Hampshire and Maine. Non-interstate Florida roads drop to 74%, lower than Alabama (which has less interstate roadways than Florida) but higher than all other Southern states and most Northern states.

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-ranks-among-top-5....

quickthrowman• 2 years ago

There’s a joke in Minnesota about having only two seasons, winter and road construction. As soon as the ground thaws, road construction starts up all over Minnesota.

St Paul is right next door to Mpls and has absolutely terrible roads, but they’re improving. St Paul has full road replacement on a 120 year schedule because they got drunk on TIF over the past few decades and don’t have the money for to schedule full road replacements every 60 years.

St Paul does enough road maintenance and pothole filling that it owns an asphalt batch plant: https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-maint...

bluGill13• 2 years ago

My grandpa used to work for the MN highway department. That isn't a joke, it was reality for them. Either the plows are on the truck and they are plowing snow, or the plows are not on and they are fixing roads.

Roads are a tiny % of any government budget. St Paul could have the money to do more if they wanted, and it wouldn't be much of a total budget increase. However it would still increase taxes and so people should debate if it is worth the cost.

xenospn2• 2 years ago

When I was driving in Minneapolis a few years ago, you couldn’t drive more than 20 miles an hour because the roads were so bad around the neighborhood. I wonder if they fixed that.

brewdad10• 2 years ago

I think Minneapolis has a citywide 20 mph speed limit for non-arterial roads. They might consider the rough road a feature.

throaway204• 2 years ago

Winnipeg has notoriously bad roads throughout the city, and the harsh winters are always the excuse. But Minneapolis and Fargo don't seem to have these problems!

Spivak• 2 years ago

This explains why there's such a huge and consistent split in how good/crumbling US infrastructure is! It's "lives in a top-10 metro area / doesn't." It's been living rent-free in my head why opinions on this are so unbelievably stark. Turns out you can both be right.

VyseofArcadia• 2 years ago

How does Hawaii have interstates?

ThinkingGuy• 2 years ago

https://www.straightdope.com/21341858/how-can-there-be-inter...

cratermoon• 2 years ago

Just one. H1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_H-1>

DCH34165• 2 years ago

More than one. H-1, H-2, H-3, and then looks like a spur of some kind H-201.

kube-system9• 2 years ago

Because "interstate" doesn't refer to the function of the particular road, it refers to the federal program that created them: the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways".

There are a ton of interstate highways which do not go between states, even in the continental US, and especially the auxiliary (i.e. 3-digit) interstate highways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_auxiliary_Interstate_H...

The US already previously had (and still has), a national road system that traversed across states other than the Eisenhower system. But nobody calls these roads "interstate" because they're not in the Eisenhower system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...

"Interstate" has always specifically referred to Eisenhower system roads only.

kunwon12• 2 years ago

I watched this YT video [1] about the interstate system recently, I found it informative and entertaining

To me, the Eisenhower Tunnel in CO [2] is noteworthy. It crosses the continental divide at altitude. From what I've read and watched, they don't allow HAZMAT trucks to go through, because the risk is simply too high (well equipped fire/rescue departments are hours away, among other factors)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR7BA3xEmDo

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Tunnel?useskin=vect...

czinck• 2 years ago

There's an interstate that runs entirely within one county, in Maryland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_97

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

Not just that, but how is the overall quality of roads in Hawaii so bad?

It is not a poor state.

kube-system9• 2 years ago

Interestingly, I expected cold places to have lower road quality in general due to things like freeze-thaw cycles and the impact of road salting, but there doesn’t seem to be much correlation. Plenty of cold places (North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota) have good-quality roads

Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some of the least road salting -- because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate snowfall and the people who live in the harshest climates are often better equipped to drive on hard packed snow.

hanniabu• 2 years ago

Also depends on where you're looking. Cities will have worse roads because they're always digging working on gas and water lines, some of which leak. That disturbance of the ground will make things a lot worse than some rural road where the ground hasn't been disturbed since it was created.

softfalcon8• 2 years ago

This is the truth. They’re digging out under a massive overpass in my area right now to fix water main and gas piping issues as we speak.

Road is all torn up and patched up. It has been a boondoggle of construction cones and heavy machinery for months now.

bluGill13• 2 years ago

The new suburb I live in they put all that beside the road not under it. That is what the space between the road and sidewalk is for.

softfalcon8• 2 years ago

This is somewhat true where I’m at in Canada. In the city, half the people have proper winter tires, the other half “wing it” with whatever they can afford/put-up-with.

Regularly see accidents all winter long from goofs sliding straight across multiple lanes of traffic or going off into the ditch. Only some of us are prepared.

We don’t salt, only drop sand grit and gravel sparingly. Our roads become ice rinks or snow piles for a decent portion of the winter.

Your comment about us being “better equipped” made me chuckle as I spent this morning watching my neighbours play slip-and-slide in the cul-de-sac cause they opted to not put their winter tires on.

As someone who grew up in the mountains, their behaviour is downright dangerous in my opinion.

kube-system9• 2 years ago

opted to not put their winter tires on.

Heh. At least they have them, and/or know what they are. I have been met with "they make tires just for snow?" when talking about snow tires in the US before.

grecy3• 2 years ago

In (most?all?) of BC winter tires are required by law, and salting the roads is illegal due to the horrific damage the run off does to the environment.

tonyarkles• 2 years ago

goofs

Can confirm, definitely Canadian!

We just had a massive first snow dump in Regina here. 15-20cm in 24h. It's treacherous out there, I was in 4HI all morning trying to get around.

bongodongobob• 2 years ago

I've lived in WI 40+ years and winter tires are a waste of money. Unless you're in the mountains somewhere or going off-road, they're just an extra thing to buy.

yxhuvud• 2 years ago

Wait, Canada don't have regulations about having winter tires of some kind? Wow, that is odd.

jcadam3• 2 years ago

Winter tires are not cheap. I'm in Alaska and recently paid $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150. And the tires I chose were one of the lower cost options available.

So I totally understand why folks who can barely afford to put gas in their car are driving around on all-seasons year round (and ending up in the ditch frequently).

bell-cot• 2 years ago

... because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate snowfall and ...

Perhaps more important - salt's effectiveness fades as the temperature decreases. Sand and gravel do not have that problem. So if you're running the Road Dept. in an area where serious cold ain't some rare event - why would you bother with salt?

EDIT: I know the "melt to pavement, solar heating finishes the job" tactic. Which can work with heavier snowfall, if you plow/shovel before salting. Colder weather inhibits both halves of the melt-&-heat. (Plus the further north you are, the shorter & slantier the sun's rays get, even on clear days.)

DCH34165• 2 years ago

Because the goal is to get the road surface exposed so it'll heat up and melt off the snow during the day. And then the residual salt will leave a residue which will help prevent refreezing.

DCH34165• 2 years ago

Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some of the least road salting

Salt isn't effective when it gets really cold so it tends to be applied more around freezing as opposed to below. It also depends on the road surface temperature as well, heat of the sun melts off snow and that freezes at night. So you'll find salt has to be applied intelligently to the conditions, on bridges for example, which I suppose would come from experience.

I also observe southern states seem to use more rubber instead of rock in their road surface. So that might be a factor on how robust they are to wear.

bluGill13• 2 years ago

0F is defined as the temperature that salt on ice reaches. Regular salt is used a lot in Minnesota because it works fine most of the time and is cheap. It doesn't work on the coldest days, so about 15F they start adding in salts other than NaCl. Below -15F they no longer have a salt that works at all - but those days are rare.

My Grandpa worked for the MN highway department until around 1995 when he retied, so my information is a bit out of date, but chemistry doesn't change that much so I doubt it is very different today.

alwayslikethis• 2 years ago

The more obvious reason is that colder places do not get as many freeze-thaw cycles. It simply stays frozen for a few months. In contrast, much of the northeast experiences many more freeze-thaw cycles since even in the winter it is warm enough to thaw the ice on some days.

bluGill13• 2 years ago

Cold places see a lot of freeze-thaw cycles in fall and spring - before and after the hard freeze. I don't know how they compare, but it isn't clear cut.

wkjagt• 2 years ago

I've often heard the cold climate given as the reason for the terrible roads in Quebec, but you clearly notice the roads getting better as you cross the border out of Quebec into Ontario for example.

lifeisgood99• 2 years ago

The Quebec road industry has historically been corrupt.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-roadwork-indu... and many many other reports.

Congeec• 2 years ago

Yep, in New York the pothole season is early Spring rather than winter, for example.

rpcope1• 2 years ago

Colorado near the absolute bottom for road quality
Kansas and Wyoming have much better road quality

Absolutely zero surprise there. It's amazing the moment you cross the Kansas-Colorado border on I-70, for example, how the interstate goes from very good to immediately extremely bad.

panzagl• 2 years ago

Ahhhh Colorado, blue state tastes with a red state budget.

dmix• 2 years ago

Kansas and Wyoming are red states?

Hilift• 2 years ago

It's like I-70 was strafed by an A-10. Kansas I-70 uses concrete on a mostly stable substrate. It's flat, and doesn't pockmark like asphalt. Kansas tears out about five miles at a time and goes one lane during pours. Don't see that often in other states due to it's impractical.

glitchc• 2 years ago

A good comparison point would be Germany. It has a very large network of roads too, some designed for very high speeds, and a strong driving culture (perhaps stronger than the continental US).

kunwon12• 2 years ago

I'm an American, I lived in Germany for several years around the turn of the century. German roads that I encountered were far superior to American roads. Their construction is far more robust, the roads last much longer. And with German lane discipline (passing someone on the right is practically a cultural taboo, it's a prohibition that's taken quite seriously) they are usually a joy to drive on.

PaulDavisThe1st5• 2 years ago

I found the autobahn utterly nerve-wracking to drive on.

In the US, on an interstate, the MPH spread around the speed limit is probably -20 to +20 (i.e. limit is 75, slowest cars are at 55, fastest at 95)

In Germany, on autobahns, you have speed ratios of up to 2x. You have to constantly be 110% aware of every vehicle within 1/4 mile of you, because you could either be closing in the much slower vehicle in front of you, or suddenly approached and passed by a much faster vehicle from behind.

f1refly• 2 years ago

It's also a legal taboo, fyi

cr18952• 2 years ago

And with German lane discipline

The number of big trucks hanging out in the left lane in the US drives me mad...

grecy3• 2 years ago

I just drove across ten US states and five Canadian provinces from the West to East Coast, shipped my Jeep to Europe by way of Iceland, then drove 100 miles through Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Driving on the freeways in those mainland European countries was immensely relaxing and easy - the road quality is vastly, vastly better than the US or Canada. Expansion gaps, cracks and imperfections are almost imperceptible.

Anecdotal, of course.

I have a strong memory of Driving I-40 from Cali into Arizona and not being able to maintain 60mph because the potholes were so big I though I was going to break the suspension on my Jeep.

vinay4272• 2 years ago

I think anecdotal evidence may be a reasonable proxy for those countries, although at least in stereotype and anecdotally they are very far from representative of (even) western Europe. I've noticed quite a bit of variance between major highways and smaller highways or other roads across Italy, for example.

irrational• 2 years ago

I'm surprised AZ is at 82%. I've driven all over the country and the very worst highway I've ever experienced, by far, is the drive from Las Vegas to Flagstaff.

vesrah• 2 years ago

Yeah, the 93 between Kingman and Nevada is absolutely terrible. Last time I was through there (9 months ago) they were doing a small bit of paving but it wasn't in one of the rougher areas.

smilekzs2• 2 years ago

The SFBay I-880 and US-101 are always packed, often under construction, but still pothole-filled, with sections of extreme roughness. Compare this to our OR neighbors, where there are signs saying "your tax dollars at work" by ORDOT everywhere. I used to scoff at this as a display of insecurity, but apparently (from TFA at least), Oregonians' tax dollars _are_ at work.

CA takes so many tax dollars from my hands. Why aren't they "at work"?

mhuffman• 2 years ago

They are "at work" ... for other people's versions of "at work".

xvedejas3• 2 years ago

I'd like to see California consider reducing the total mileage of roads and focus on having a smaller amount of higher quality paved surfaces. My neighborhood street does not need to be 60ft wide, and our freeways do not need more lanes.

s1artibartfast7• 2 years ago

Oregon manages about 40% the road miles of California with 10% the population and 70% of the tax revenue per capita.

brewdad10• 2 years ago

Start with the fire department. They are the ones demanding 60 ft wide residential streets so that their trucks can turn around without having to drive a few blocks out of the way.

mikysco• 2 years ago

Oregon is 60% the size of California by land area but only 10% of the population.

Roads like 101 & 880 can't be worked on during the day because of massive congestion issues. But drive up & down 101 after 9 or 10pm (even on weekends), and you'll see crews hard at work. Hats off to those crews working the night shift.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Compare this to our OR neighbors, where there are signs saying "your tax dollars at work" by ORDOT everywhere.

I see these signs all over Southern California (I remember seeing them around the Bay Area especially post 08 GFC): https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e074b5_617daf538f0c4e0e89...

They’ve been around since at least the late 90s/early 2000s. There's a whole official site for it too: https://rebuildingca.ca.gov/

dwelch91• 2 years ago

Doesn't "often under construction" mean that they are "at work"?

s1artibartfast7• 2 years ago

I often breathe a sigh of relief when I pass over the boarder into Nevada and my car starts shaking.

Roughly 70% the tax revenue per capita ($3.8k vs 2.6), but somehow they manage to maintain their roads.

ink_13• 2 years ago

On the contrary, I believe they are. There are thousands of miles of back roads in California built and maintained by Caltrans that are in absolutely incredible condition. Drive up and down any random mountain/hill/pass off a main freeway and enjoy a road the envy of almost anywhere else: well-built, smooth, with painted lines and signage.

880 and 101 suffer because their high traffic volumes cause much higher wear and tear while also making it difficult to make repairs.

boogieknite• 2 years ago

Anecdote: Worked road construction summer 2010 as the guy who put those little sticky tabs on the road to mark where lines are repainted after construction is complete.

Sometimes I'd finish early and get odd jobs. Between Roseburg and the Oregon coast a colleague and I were assigned to stand one of those "your tax dollars at work" signs on a steep slope. Took 2 hours at prevailing wage OT and for total labor cost of $480 between the two of us. By far the steepest labor rate I'd ever been able to charge. Thanks for the money, irony!

Lammy4• 2 years ago

The SFBay I-880 and US-101 are always packed

A lot of this is due to the freeway system being unfinished.

101 would have been supplemented by the Bayfront Freeway (CA 87): https://cahighways.org/ROUTE087.html#_ROUTING_SEG2

And 880 by routes 61, 238, 185, 13, and 77:

- https://cahighways.org/ROUTE061.html#_HIST1964

- https://cahighways.org/ROUTE238.html

- https://cahighways.org/ROUTE185.html

- https://cahighways.org/ROUTE013.html

- https://cahighways.org/ROUTE077.html

wbl4• 2 years ago

Would have just meant more commuters

codexb• 2 years ago

It's heavily county based. Drive on the 5 through LA county and the second it crosses into Orange County, it magically gets incredibly better.

kylehotchkiss• 2 years ago

we have a lot of expensive bridges

bloomingeek2• 2 years ago

The arm-pit state of Oklahoma, where I live, is considering a "mile tax" to support the maintenance of our road system. Of course we know it's also to offset EV vehicles gas tax loss. (which EV owners already have) Our roads are terrible and don't usually get repaired until they're almost dangerous.

This tax will hurt fixed income and poorer people the most. As Thomas Jefferson said: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” My state is so red, it's scarlet.

qup• 2 years ago

I can't figure out if you want the roads fixed or you don't want the tax.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

People being too poor is a separate issue from bad tax systems incentivizing unsustainable behavior.

Tax liabilities that are a function of consumption are the right way to tax.

If the tax burden is deemed too high for poor people, then give them cash.

Two different problems, two different solutions, and it keeps the incentives aligned properly.

seizethecheese• 2 years ago

“This is your brain on politics.” (A reply to the grandparent comment.)

weberer• 2 years ago

That sounds just like the FairTax plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

olyjohn4• 2 years ago

Every state has been getting lobbied to do this for at least the last 10 years. These bills come through the legislatures every year, and I think it will keep coming until finally one of them passes. There are manufacturers of the GPS trackers pushing for it, and companies who want to have the state-granted monopoly to manage the tracking and billing. They are frothing at the mouth to get this passed and make a ton of money billing every single person.

0xffff2• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't you just use a yearly odometer inspection by the DMV? Even if the legislature wanted to enact such a tax, why involve GPS and third party companies?

surfaceofthesun• 2 years ago

I think a miles traveled tax that accounts for vehicle weight would probably less regressive than the current gas tax.

EVs save substantially in running costs. I’d imagine it would charge those using 3/4 and 1-ton pickups as family cars the most.

brewdad10• 2 years ago

Oregon has tried to implement a miles tax multiple times but failed to pass it. Instead they've opted for a surcharge on vehicle registrations for EVs and also on any vehicle that gets better than 20 mpg.

Counterproductive from a climate change standpoint for a "green" state but it preserved the road money.

cake_robot• 2 years ago

Internalizing the costs you create are good though. In a perfect world I would think weight x miles would be what you'd want to tax on. I say this as someone who owns an EV; I should have to account for the higher road deterioration my heavier vehicle causes. If someone's income is too low you fix that other ways than trying to subsidize their externalizing behaviors.

zip12342• 2 years ago

Why should we subsidize driving exactly? Charge per mile based on how much vehicle weighs and pollutes and charge enough to cover the cost of maintaining the roads. Many of the poorest people can't even afford a car. Insurance, fuel, maintenance are expensive and paying for roads is expensive.

cryptozeus• 2 years ago

Great analysis! In last decade I have seen road quality of California degrade like crazy. It used to have clean, open roads now the quality has gone down to trash. Hwy 101 feels like you are in New Jersey.

rconti• 2 years ago

Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than rural roads.

There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with dissimilar materials, and leave.

bluGill13• 2 years ago

Rural roads are often unpaved. The local authority has to come by regularly with a grade to redo things or they become unusable quickly. Overall this is by far the cheapest way to have a road, but it doesn't scale to high use and city folks demand something that makes less dust. Rural roads also includes minimum maintance roads which demand 4wd (real 4wd, many SUVs will have trouble) when the weather is nice and a winch is a must when things get rainy or snowy.

Though given his definition of quality I expect he is actually ignoring all the real rural roads and only talking about major roads which while they get less traffic than urban roads are maintained to similar standards.

engineer_222• 2 years ago

In my area the rural roads are typically asphalt. This part of the country receives a lot of precipitation and cold weather and our soils are pretty soft.

They stay in good shape for years, with little maintenance. There aren't many patches because there aren't many utilities. Truck traffic tends to gravitate to the highways, and car and ag traffic are low impact.

rwiggins2• 2 years ago

Maybe area-dependent? I grew up in an extraordinarily rural area in Tennessee. Most roads were paved (asphalt). Even ones out in the middle of nowhere.

The conditions of some of the remote roads might not have been great, mind you... and some seemed "thinner" almost, maybe paved a long time ago?

jmspring• 2 years ago

Living in a rural northern CA county, the roads are paved, however many are failing. The funny this is, one county over has much better maintained roads (by the state) because they are in a different district.

nozzlegear3• 2 years ago

Rural roads are often unpaved.

Like the other replies have indicated, I'm not so sure this is the case? I live in very rural northwest Iowa, and while there are certainly plenty of gravel roads around here, I'm only driving on them if I'm intentionally trying to go "off the beaten path." You'll take a gravel road if you live on a farm, or you're trying to get to somewhere secluded such as a lake, campground or maybe a county park; but (imo) it's rare for the average person to drive down a gravel road just going from Point A to Point B on their daily commute.

margalabargala• 2 years ago

At the very beginning he separates into:

- freeways

- local roads

- unpaved roads

Obviously the high-clearance-only roads in the mountain West will score poorly here, but when trying to compare US roads to Netherlands roads, those are not useful as the Netherlands has no equivalent.

insane_dreamer3• 2 years ago

Rural around here in the PNW, the vast majority of rural roads are paved, except for forest service roads and the odd road here or there. I do a lot of countryside cycling and it's rare that I encounter a gravel road.

What they don't always have is the smooth surface found on highways; it's paved but of a bit of a rougher type (don't know all the technical differences, but it's noticeable on a road bike).

EasyMark• 2 years ago

I don't think so. I grew up only in rural areas. We had plenty of roads, the vast majority of public roads were blacktop. The only dirt roads I recall were on private property.

vel0city8• 2 years ago

You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but probably considerably fewer semi-teicks and busses and fire trucks and cement mixers what not. Those big trucks passing through are going to stick to interstates far more often when going through rural areas.

hparadiz• 2 years ago

On average yea but when a rural road is neglected it's far far worse than any urban road. I'm looking at you Pennsylvania.

Loughla• 2 years ago

We have large farm machinery though.

FuriouslyAdrift• 2 years ago

City buses are what really shred urban roads (and winter plows)

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-da...

AngryData3• 2 years ago

In my rural area there are tons of gravel pits so the roads take a lot of abuse. However every gravel pit ive seen here open up on a new road has been forced to spend the money on upgrading that road to handle those gravel trucks.

MisterTea2• 2 years ago

My favorite are the leaky man hole and other infrastructure covers which allow rain to wash the road bed into the pit. Then a void forms and a pothole forms. Then the muni fills the hole only for it to reappear as more road bed is washed away. Then repeat ad nauseam. I sometimes imagine a snake of asphalt all the way to the sewer plant.

burnte2• 2 years ago

This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.

ASalazarMX2• 2 years ago

This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.

nonameiguess• 2 years ago

Probably everywhere frankly, but Dallas is terrible, too. My wife and I took up skateboarding recently and it became much more obvious. Go out to the suburbs or a running trail or nice park and it's smooth sailing. You can push and coast. Where we live near downtown, it's cracks, rocks, discontinuities, metal plates. The gas company also dug up a bunch of bedrock 7 years ago, left a huge pile of it on the corner, rain came a few days later, and for the last 7 years, our sidewalks have been covered in dirt and the houses and cars all get a thin yellow film on them because there is so much dirt in the air all the time.

That's before considering what regular construction crews do. Most of the sidewalks are closed most of the time. They're routinely torn out and never fixed. There are nails and other debris in the roads all the time. When we first moved to our current address, my wife had all four of her tires go flat within the first year. I didn't own a car until two years ago, but both front tires have gotten nails in them already. That's also on top of the city's contracted out private dump truck crushing my rear windshield and smashing the hatch and leaving a business card with a claim number on one of my front wiper blades. That was nice to walk out to.

Then there was the crew across the street stealing all of my power tools when I accidentally left my garage open one day.

I'm not a NIMBY, but experiencing this makes me weary of the Hacker News zeitgeist railing against communities that don't want their neighborhoods turned into constant construction. There are entirely non-evil reasons homeowners might want that because building where people already live is incredibly disruptive.

LeanderK2• 2 years ago

interesting. I noticed something similar in the UK but not in Germany. Maybe some simple change in the way these utility repairs are regulated is to blame?

While interstates are nice, cities are where people live, so the quality of urban roads matters and is maybe the reason for the perception of US roads?

numpad02• 2 years ago

The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_tunnel

YZF• 2 years ago

I remember the neighbourhood where I grew up. The roads were great until the cable TV company slices them all open to put their cables in. Then the patches would never hold, water would get in and under the road when it rained, and the roads were terrible for years.

thaumasiotes3• 2 years ago

The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.

Is Public Works a state agency? I would have expected them to be subordinate to the city.

amanaplanacanal2• 2 years ago

Part of it is funding. Highways are for the most part federally funded, and the feds can print money at will. Urban roads have to be repaired from the city budget, and user fees (fuel taxes) are nowhere near enough to keep them maintained properly.

leetcrew• 2 years ago

I thought the feds pay a large portion of construction but the states pay most of the maintenance. some states clearly do a worse job of highway maintenance than others. it's like night and day crossing the MD/PA border on I-95.

whatever1• 2 years ago

2 huge pipelines with big enough diameter to fit smaller ones. One for utilities in (gas, electricity, cables, warm water). One for waste (sewage, trash etc)

Spooky232• 2 years ago

That’s part of the reason. The other is that rural roads are mostly county or state funded (often through large Federal appropriations), and draw in a larger tax base and in-house professional engineering.

That’s why you can drive around rust belt areas of Upstate NY on nice roads - NYC Finance bonuses pay for that.

City roads are usually maintained by the city, which has much more limited access to capital. Because of that, in-house work is usually limited to mill and pave work and there’s not enough throughput for an appropriate staff of engineers. Big projects are usually task focus (safety, multi-modal) and are funded by Federal grants and use outside design and build contractors.

For the shared utility work, there is some coordination. My wife worked for a municipal water utility and ran the metering and infrastructure division. They received notice of paving or other jobs and prioritized proactive maintenance to happen while the road was under construction. The city would fine entities for digging up the street for non-emergency purposes for 6-12 months after the project completed. It helps, but broken mains or transformers necessitate the street cut.

potato37328424• 2 years ago

This trope that rich cities pay for everything needs to be taken out and shot. Yes, there is a cash flow there but it's nickels or dimes on the dollar, not a huge amount compared to variances in budget and expenditures. Buffalo would not turn into Mogadishu without NYC paying for the privilege of ordering it around by proxy of Albany.

salynchnew3• 2 years ago

It's kind of maddening how often blogs like this will make motions towards developing an educated opinion (citing multiple reports, researching stats from public datassets, etc.) but don't seem to have bothered to actually talk to any of the people who are invovled in the practice they describe in their post (in this case, building roads).

fckgw• 2 years ago

I mean this isn't a research article, it's some data crunching and musings on a blog. I would not expect this person to start conducting interviews for a blog post.

grogenaut• 2 years ago

They put in new pavement in my neighborhood explicitly to fix some sewer issues. They ended up redoing several sections as the contractors paved over 3 access points (manhole covers). I'm not sure how you pave over a man-hole cover when it's sticking up 6 inches from the rest of the street.

merely-unlikely• 2 years ago

In New York, companies doing road work are required to leave a small plastic circle embedded in their patch that can be used to identify who did the work. They seem to most often be blue though I’m not sure the color is a requirement. Once you see it, you’ll notice them everywhere.

xenadu02• 2 years ago

Funny enough San Francisco Public Utilities coordinates with SF Streets to replace water/sewer lines prior to planned repaving work specifically to avoid this problem. They are clear that need and scheduling sometimes don't allow it but wherever possible they do.

gaazoh• 2 years ago

Not only that, but underground infrastructure and surrounding buildings put a high constraint on pavement design by putting a hard limit the total thickness of the pavement: can't build too deep or you'll disrupt other infrastructure, can't build too high or the road will be higher than surrounding building entrances or sidewalks.

Interstate construction don't have such limits are typically half a meter or more, not counting foundation earthworks, which can easily double that figure. In cities where telecom networks are 60cm deep and gas and electric networks 80cm deep, you just don't have the luxury of designing a meter-thick pavement that will have a decent IRI for decades to come.

InDubioProRubio2• 2 years ago

The problem is- that infrastructure is a scam. As in - its easy to build it, as its priced into the creation of a new house / suburbia. But maintenance is a piled up costfactor, not city and citizen has plans for. So everyone is constantly on the run from hoods were the infrastructure is decaying due to maintenance debt returns the road back to rubble.

stuaxo• 2 years ago

All countries have more stuff under urban roads, do first world countries tend to have worse quality urban roads than country roads?

rsynnott• 2 years ago

but this is based on a survey of the perceptions of business leaders about road quality, not actual road data

Like... business leaders specifically in the freight and transport industry, or just _in general_? The first seems like it might be _marginally_ useful; the second is just nonsensical.

Jimmc4143• 2 years ago

Greatly depends on the state. Louisiana interstates still haven't recovered from the fallout from the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed in 1984, which raised the legal drinking age to 21 as a condition of receiving annual federal highway funds. Louisiana was the last state in the U.S. to have a legal drinking age of 18. Louisiana experienced about 9 years of reduced highway funds as a result.

PaulDavisThe1st5• 2 years ago

Also the only state I've seen with drive through daquiri service !

Jimmc4143• 2 years ago

It gets worse! They tape the lids to the cup and as long as you don’t put the straw in the cup it’s not an open container.

Also, the state legislature ruled that roosters were not animals to circumvent cock fighting laws.

There’s a web of similar Napoleonic Code caused loopholes in Louisiana law

asdasdsddd2• 2 years ago

Love that I live in California pay out my ass in property AND state tax and get the worst roads in America despite the fact that we barely deal with ice, snow, or rain.

maxwellg• 2 years ago

You personally may pay lots of property taxes but California's Prop 13 means that people who have been here for a long time and kept property within the family are paying significantly less. Our average tax rate is 35th in the nation - https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/high-state-property.... I grew up in New Jersey originally so I have an admittedly warped view of property taxes, though.

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what the solution is but there is a gross misallocation of housing in California... the suburban family homes with 4 bedrooms and massive yards designed for kids to play outside are almost exclusively occupied by retired childless people that only use the rooms when the grandkids visit, and tiny apartments are packed with families that are paying 4x+ for housing what the retired people in large homes are paying.

Prop. 19 was supposed to fix this but clearly did not- I rent in a suburb and have a young kid, but there are almost no other people under 65 or so within a large radius of my home.

asdasdsddd2• 2 years ago

Yes prop 13 is truly disgusting

mcntsh• 2 years ago

You could say that some residents aren't paying their fair share, but I'll have to be convinced that California lacks the tax revenue to fix such problems.

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

Keeping roads perfect requires taking them out of commission for repair... which is a disaster on California freeways that have constant traffic. I think CA does a fair job of balancing that with road condition, and I assume they are already using more durable and expensive road construction methods than other areas that lacks so much constant heavy traffic.

brewdad10• 2 years ago

I wonder if California would be better off with more Carmageddon type projects like when they shut down the 405 for like a week and hammered out necessary work.

vzaliva• 2 years ago

Does this statistics include private roads? Or it is only roads accessible to public?

blibble2• 2 years ago

as a brit I've driven through most of the US states and major cities, and they were generally comparable to what I was used to at home and throughout continental europe

Los Angeles though was something else, giant gouges on 12 lane highways every few feet for miles on end

and on sliproads, sudden surprise vertical walls with right angled bends

was like something out of the third world

vishrajiv• 2 years ago

Do you remember which highway you were driving? Interestingly this goes against my experience. I’ve actually remarked to many friends that I enjoy night-time driving in Los Angeles since the highways are well-lit and smooth (and of course, no traffic at night).

blibble2• 2 years ago

I-5

PaulDavisThe1st5• 2 years ago

Los Angeles though was something else, giant gouges on 12 lane highways every few feet for miles on end

Probably concrete fastening projects.

sliproads

on/off ramps for AmE speakers.

kristjansson• 2 years ago

Los Angeles is the v0.0.1 of freeways. Lessons were learned.

koyote• 2 years ago

As someone who has driven in many different developed countries in the world (and been a passenger in many developing countries), California highways often feel like those in developing countries but it's combined with a much higher travelling speed.

I think the only other country where I regularly got jolted up (nearly hitting my head on the ceiling of the car) was India.

chainwax• 2 years ago

I'm from South Carolina, pretty close to the border with North Carolina. All my life i've heard that South Carolina's roads are terrible, especially compared to North Carolina's _amazing_ roads.

Looking at this data though, it seems while NC edges out SC by a small margin on interstate roads, SC actually beats NC on local roads.

Take that, North Carolina!

xenospn2• 2 years ago

I’m currently in Albania, a country famous for shit roads. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, really), their roads are better than LA roads.

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

There is more than one kind of quality.

When I drove from New Mexico from New Hampshire I thought roads in the US South were remarkably good. I settled in New York where major roads seemed pretty good but go to Pennsylvania and it seems there are two kinds of roads: bad roads and roads under construction, you never seem to find a good road that was just constructed. A lot of people thought it was frost heaves but this article say it isn’t.

My quality problem in NY is that atlas maps and GPS maps show numerous roads that aren’t really passable or if they are passable are too risky. I never saw ‘minimum maintenance’ or ‘abandoned’ roads before I came to NY and I wish they were so marked in GPS maps. There is a road near me which is sometimes passable in the winter if you have the right kind of vehicle and if you know the road goes downhill and won’t require that much traction… People who don’t have the right kind of vehicle will get led by GPS down this road and think it is OK because there are tracks but halfway through they panic and try to turn around now they are in trouble. That road is passable in the summer except for when it gets washed out.

Also NH is in a class by itself with its motor-oriented infrastructure (in 1980 they rerouted route 93 to go around Manchester and nobody goes there anymore) which is tree-structured as much as possible so you have many levels of hierarchy which can and will jam up. Want to walk? You can’t get there from here. I can go for years in NY without updating my GPS maps but if I drive to NH I will see the road I am got rerouted and there is a shopping center where there used to be a road. And this is in a state that doesn’t have income taxes so I don’t know how they pay for it.

quercusa• 2 years ago

I'm convinced that the states neighboring Pennsylvania take extra care of the last mile of roads on their side leading into PA so the transition is especially obvious.

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

It sure looks that way on the Maryland side.

alkonaut• 2 years ago

The more important quality metric than “roughness” is infrastructure/safety.

A multi lane road shouldn’t cross another one in a flat traffic light intersection. That risks T-collisions if someone runs a red light.

It’s pretty cheap to keep roads smooth if you skimp on making separated lanes, safe multilevel junctions and roundabouts in every intersection.

lemax• 2 years ago

I once drove across the US-Canadian border during a snowstorm. On the Canadian side, the road was a slew of white slush that had us hydroplaning on and off. But as soon as we crossed back into the States, it was like a switch flipped. The road went from a slushy bog to a pristine surface with zero snow accumulation, just a slight gleam of moisture.

rikthevik2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure if you ended up in Saskatchewan, but it kind of sounds like you did. The highways in Alberta are quite a bit better and it's a relatively abrupt change.

TMWNN• 2 years ago

I've heard that the quality of the Alaska Highway becomes noticeably better after entering the US from Canada.

scoofy• 2 years ago

rough roads inflict costs in the form of reduced vehicle speeds.

I mean, this seems like a benefit in disguise in many urban areas. The idea that we want high speeds is a real premise that needs to be defended.

alexischr• 2 years ago

There is great variation between states. A good example is driving from Phoenix to San Diego via Yuma - the Arizona side is much better maintained, and the rougher California roads continue all the way to the city.

(At least as of roughly four years ago)

dmd• 2 years ago

Massachusetts in nearly last place, right where I expected it to be but always assumed that was just "everyone thinks their own is the worst".

nickjj2• 2 years ago

It's interesting New Hampshire leads the way for interstate highways and it is a 0% income tax state.

I live in NY but I went to New Hampshire last month for the first time. I have to say the roads were really good, even in more remote areas in the White Mountain region. Heck even the dirt road I had to go on for 1.5 miles was in good shape for a Hyundai Elantra rental car.

On the flip side, the roads near me are really bad in some spots. It's torn up pavement with massive pot holes for years in a decently trafficked area literally 1 minute away from a major highway.

kaliqt• 2 years ago

It's simple: politics over people.

NY's orgs (government or otherwise) steal all the tax money while pretending to be for the people, NH conversely does not.

justin662• 2 years ago

It's interesting New Hampshire leads the way for interstate highways and it is a 0% state tax area.

You're talking about the state income tax? It'd be unusual for any state to use much of that money for roads. There are a lot of other tax revenue sources dedicated specifically to that purpose.

nickjj2• 2 years ago

You're talking about the state income tax?

Yep thanks, I updated my post to reflect that.

You oftentimes hear road quality being thrown around in relation to what you pay in income tax or taxes in general. That is all hearsay though.

Agingcoder• 2 years ago

Interesting. I traveled 15 years ago around california, over 4000 miles in three weeks. I remember being shocked at the state of the roads - some of them were downright dangerous, the car wouldn’t stay on the road, and I felt I was more or less constantly vibrating. Based on the article I must have driven on non interstate roads which are in california in particular really bad .

rightbyte• 2 years ago

"Overall, the quality of US interstates is very high, while the quality of roads in major cities is quite poor."

Is this really true? Coming from a country with alot of ice, American cities I've worked in seemed to have prestine roads.

Terretta• 2 years ago

The article, and as of this comment, this thread, don't seem to contain particularly deep (ahem) comparisons of road construction, such as this article from Nature about bridge layer differences between US, Germany, England, and France:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12987-8

For roadbeds, here's Canada versus various EU countries, unfortunately US isn't included:

https://international.fhwa.dot.gov/pubs/pl07027/llcp_07_03.c...

This piece starts with 4 different paving approaches, relatively distinct, yet each having ~40 year lifespans (US old and new, France, Germany):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209575642...

The discussion goes into what might we mean by "how good"?

PS. US road builders better hope the measure is never total quality divided by time-to-construct. They'd have some real ground to cover (ahem):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3K_obepyo&t=1s

burnt-resistor• 2 years ago

Shitty in Silicon Valley and most of Texas, places that don't even receive snow.

donaldihunter• 2 years ago

Not surprised to see California and Californian cities near the bottom of all the lists.

randerson• 2 years ago

In my area of the US, it seems like every manhole cover was designed to be in the road… and often where ones tires need to be. Makes for a very bumpy ride even when the condition is “perfect”. I’ve driven thousands of miles/km in other countries where the roads have barely any manholes.

lexarflash8g• 2 years ago

Quality of roads in a city/town typically correlate with the income and socioeconomic status of the location. In the Bay area, affluent suburban areas have pretty good roads (believe taxes have an effect). While cities like Oakland, Vallejo, Richmond have streets full of potholes and very bumpy roads that can even damage your car while driving at a normal speed. For state with the highest income tax wonder where the funds go to. Good article on current state of US roads. I've seen other countries in EU and they seem to have much better or comparable roads in rural areas than the US.

JasserInicide• 2 years ago

Our roads shouldn't be problems anymore. Didn't we pass a $1+ trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 or is that just getting pilfered by contractors? I have 0 faith in the federal government to do anything at scale anymore.

d357r0y3r• 2 years ago

Anecdotally, it seems like a ton of projects got started as a result of this bill, but it doesn't seem like many of them are getting worked on or finished. It's giving me the impression that contractors bid and took on as many new projects as possible with no ability to actually staff or execute the projects. Given that this happened at the same time a major labor shortage occurred, perhaps it was a perfect storm.

einpoklum• 2 years ago

Overall, my main takeaway is that roads in major US cities are often shockingly bad

My main takeaway is that the US relies too much on cars and trucks relative to rail and bike (and perhaps one should say walking). I took that away from the first few lines though.

dwg• 2 years ago

Anecdotally, I once shared a house with a Russian student in Monterey, California. He told me he was amazed by the quality of our roads compared to those in his homeland, though I don't recall which part of Russia he was from.

I grew up in rural California. Despite living quite remote—about 25 kilometers from the nearest town—by my standards our main roads were well-maintained. However, numerous smaller side roads branching off to serve sparse residential areas, sometimes leading to just a handful of houses, were another matter. I wonder if California has a larger proportion of these minor roads skewing the results. Yet paradoxically, two major urban centers, San Francisco and Los Angeles, are it would seem quite terrible.

kamaal2• 2 years ago

>He told me he was amazed by the quality of our roads compared to those in his homeland

If you are from any other countries apart from the first world, the US even with all its problems is a super massive upgrade over anything back home.

jmward01• 2 years ago

This is a really great bit of analysis. I wish more things like it existed. I wonder if something similar exists for a utility comparison of roads? Something like average economic value/waste generated per mile of road? Probably not that exactly, but something that gets to not how well they are built, but instead how well they are implemented.

Dave_Rosenthal• 2 years ago

Interesting article. I would have loved to see the quality ratings weighted by how many people drive the roads, not by road-mile.

I bet it would look a lot worse. It seems like low traffic roads out in the middle of nowhere are pretty decent, while the multi lane juggernauts in downtown that everyone spend their time on are disasters.

BrenBarn• 2 years ago

Two thoughts. . .

California, which is reasonably rural

This kind of remark always makes me think about how such things are defined and about 80-20 rules. Perhaps California is "reasonably rural" in terms of the proportion of its land area that is rural. But population wise it most definitely is not. The [US Census definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...) has classified California as the most urbanized state every decade since 1980. California has an 80-20 thing going on where almost all of the population lives on a tiny portion of the land, and then there is an enormous amount of land that is almost totally empty. This is different from more prototypical east-coast-style "urban" states with not so much rural land, and also different from prototypically rural states that don't have any very large cities.

It's true that plenty of CA roads are in bad condition. But CA is in a situation where it has miles and miles of roads in remote areas that barely anyone drives on, and then it has roads in dense urban areas that see some of the heaviest traffic in the US. It's just hard to compare things in terms of miles of road.

The other thing that comes to my mind whenever I see comparisons of US roads with those in other countries is the signage. It does vary from place to place in the US, and outside the US my only real experience is with Europe, but I'm amazed at how much better and more consistent signage seems to be on highways in the US compared to Europe. In the US you can be driving through totally empty land dotted with tiny villages, and still you will see a sign "Tiny Village 20" then "Tiny Village 10", then "Tiny Village next exit", and then the exit. In Europe sometimes you can be almost in the town before you see the one and only sign saying "Medium-sized Town right here!"

In urban areas, it's fairly rare in the US to encounter intersections without street signs that are pretty well visible from all sides of an intersection, whereas in Europe many signs are flat against walls, making them hard to see except from certain angles.

There's more to driving than just road miles. :-)

kilotaras• 2 years ago

IRI measures how much a car moves vertically as it travels over a given distance, and is typically given in units like “inches per mile” or “millimeters per meter.

How accurate are phone accelerometers these days? Could Uber/Lyft/etc. start collecting that data from drivers phones.

KoftaBob2• 2 years ago

And here again we see that cold climate doesn’t seem to have much impact on road quality, with cold places like Minneapolis and New York near the top, while warm cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Dallas are near the bottom.

This stuck out to me. I wonder what NYC and Minneapolis are doing right that California should be doing to better maintain their roads?

scotty79• 2 years ago

Interstate road quality chart is rough... It's like somebody dropped the ball on maintenance of those exactly 30 years ago.

otteromkram• 2 years ago

rough roads inflict costs in the form of reduced vehicle speeds.

Most non-rural places do this on purpose in concert with not ticketing noisy (eg - exhaust notes) cars and trucks. Really makes for a sadistic feel when noise machines are prevented from leaving the area quickly.

Traffic "calming" is another deplorable initiative. Nothing better than exerting ultimate control over the roads to sadistically keep them filled with traffic at all times so that peace and quiet never surmise.

And, people still believe they have the freedom to drive wherever they want, anytime they choose. Sure, but you're basically on a bus schedule now with all the added stops and flow control.

Say, can y'all figure out how to create road surfaces that actually dissipate noise (like blacktop), but not for a limited time or limited ideal operating envelope?

FrustratedMonky• 2 years ago

Title is for 'American' roads.

I'd like to see some of these charts with other countries included like Germany, or some country from each continent.

HarHarVeryFunny• 2 years ago

As an American living in the North East, I'd say American roads are crap. I'm not sure if construction methods are part of it, but it seems to largely be down to absurdly shoddy repairs.

Growing up in the UK (which has similar winter freeze-thaw cycles to contend with), I was used to seeing pothole repairs done with hot asphalt, jackhammer-like packing down of repair material, and steam rollers. In the US it's quite common to see them just throw few shovels of loose material into a pothole and pat it down with the back of a hammer - or sometimes just leave it loose for the next car's tires to throw right back out again.

unstyledcontent2• 2 years ago

As a Minnesotan, I'm both surprised and not surprised that Minnesota has some of the highest quality roads. The roads take a beating but MNDot is pretty high tech in their road quality monitoring. Our company makes a tool that automates road quality assessments using computer vision and machine learning straight from a smart phone camera. It's pretty mind blowing and hopefullyis somethingmore municipalities will adopt. If you are curious, check it out, xweather.com/roadai.

noobermin• 2 years ago

Rich for someone to say "roads don't get a lot of attention" when they literally pulls billions every year whereas transit gets a pittance.

How good are American roads?

Related Stories