Well?
I live in the Rocky Mountains, and road maintenance is crucial, especially during winter. We don’t have much in the way of freeways (80 mph), but our high-speed roads (70 mph) are kept up well. We don’t have many guard rails, so if you spin out or fall asleep, you will likely hit a tree or go over an embankment. I’d give our roads an A-. They are far better than the roads in most high-population states that rake in a lot more money in road tax than we do but also have many more roads to maintain.
Dogshit.
Upstate NY, potholed, and for some reason they can’t get the manhole covers installed at grade. Why are they 2+ inches below the road?
There’s also at least one street that I’m firmly convinced they have let go to complete shit just so the student population has to go slowly on it. Portions are bad old bricks, parts are just rutted pavement, it’s a mess.
Oakland, CA. Bad. Potholes, and huge homeless encampments that at times occupy actual traffic lanes.
Not too bad around here in the UK Midlands.
The street I live on is excellent, partly due to the fact that no one had dug it up since it was resurfaced some 20 odd years ago.
In the UK, Statutory Authorities (Gas electric phone etc) have the right to dig up roads to lay and fix their equipment underneath. Our road is an unusual construction in that under the tarmac are large reinforced concrete slabs instead of the usual layers of base, sub-base etc., This means that any attempt to cut into one would destroy its integrity, so no one does - they put all their stuff under the pavements instead.
The main road nearby was resurfaced at the same time, and within a couple of months, it was dug up for a replacement sewer. The trench was not filled in too well and had to be repaired several times.
Recently finished a vacation driving through 11 states. The conditions of America’s roads are appalling, imo. This trip included our annual pilgrimage to Ohio, and the deterioration is noticeable, year-over-year. Same RV rig, same route, same driver, same speed, but it’s getting worse every year. The last trip was so bumpy our cabinets were thrown open, contents were scattered, and the pocket door on the RV’s bathroom was broken off its tracks. The US infrastructure is horrible and getting worse (at least where we’re traveling).
So to the OP’s question: Local road quality here in Texas is wonderful*. I can’t tell you how happy we were to return to decent highways. I told one of my relatives the following: “The roads in Texas aren’t paved with gold, but at least they’re paved.”
*Except for I-35 of course, but everybody knows that. It’s been under construction since the Pleistocene.
My county is pretty good at keeping the main roads in reasonable repair. FWIW, they’re good at keeping most roads plowed in the winter. Right now, there’s a bad stretch in the middle of the county seat, but they’ve been expanding that part for some time now, adding a center turn lane to minimize backups. It’s just been taking a long time to get it done. I’m sure COVID hasn’t helped, affecting labor, materials, and schedule, not to mention having to take over some front yards and move power lines. Fortunately, it’s a mostly rural county without any major cities.
I expect there are probably some roads off the main arteries that are in worse shape - especially the dirt roads, and especially in the far south of the county. But overall, I think our transportation folks do a pretty good job for our tax dollars.
Generally pretty good, certainly better than in other locales I’ve lived in. Being in the southeast US, winters are milder, which helps.
The obvious exception are the older, what used to be exurban secondary roads now experiencing much heavier vehicular traffic due to sprawl type development. Not just private/commercial vehicles, but the massive increase in heavy trucks. These roads are deteriorating very quickly and I avoid them all that I can.
Not too bad here, the council resurfaced only last week !
Until then - shoddy.
An old joke in the UK :-
In the UK, we drive on the left of the road.
In my town, we drive on what’s left of the road.
In case there are Americans confused by this sentence, pavements are sidewalks.
Central North Carolina: roads are generally very good, although some of the interstates were poorly designed and had to be dug up and repaved.
I live in rural southeastern Missouri. Winters here are forgiving compared to the rest of the Midwest, so we don’t have the vicious freeze-thaw cycles that tear up the roads in, say, Central Illinois where I used to live. Potholes and cracks are rare, and all things considered, the roads are a pleasure to drive on.* I believe Missouri might actually put more money into its roads than other states, but that’s based on nothing more than me thinking “wow, Missouri does its roads well.” That and the fact that we pay personal property tax on vehicles here, so maybe there’s more money in the road budget or something.
There are downsides, of course. They’re steep and curvy here in the Ozarks, and you cant drive 100 feet without having to dodge a deer or a turkey or an armadillo or whatever.
*As long as you stay on interstate highways and state roads. County roads are another matter entirely.
In smaller Ontario cities roads tend to be pretty good. The issue is not really potholes or poor surfaces rather than they tend to close several parallel streets at the same time during construction season. It probably saves money on some expensive piece of equipment, but it makes whole areas hard to access for months at a time. In bigger Ontario cities there are a few known bad roads. The difference between driving North and south of the border are often pretty noteworthy, though.
We traveled a great deal of North Carolina on the trip I mentioned above. Everywhere from Wilmington to Currituck, Nagshead to Cherokee, and a lot of the inland areas (Greenville, Fayetteville, Charlotte, etc.) We covered most of the state, visiting over a dozen towns and overnighting in 6 or 7. I would rank NC roads as superior even to Texas, with the exception of some of the interstates. The only negative was the lack of shoulders/breakdown lanes on most of the state roads we traveled. We were puzzled by this.
“Well, what?”
- Red (The Shawshank Redemption)
I live in a relatively high income suburb in Northern California. The roads within the specific city I live in are very good. In fact I’ve heard other residents complain that the city was “wasting” tax money repaving roads that in their opinion didn’t “need” repaving. I guess those people want the city to wait until the roads are completely riddled with potholes before they repave them.
Now if you leave the city limits and drive through some of the other nearby, less wealthy suburbs, which is something I had to do in the pre-pandemic days when I was commuting to the office, it’s a completely different story. Those roads were in terrible shape and were indeed completely riddled with potholes. Just before the time I started working from home they did repave a few of the worst sections, so they may have done more since then. I don’t have much reason to drive that way nowadays.
Tucson’s roads are pretty horrible. Part of that, according to one of our city councilmen* is due to the fact that the State whatever won’t release funds to us because they dislike our being more liberal.
•he switched from being a Republican to being a Democrat because, he said, the State Legislature kept calling him a RINO and he was sick of it.
Rural Virginia area, roads are good for the most part. I don’t like that they salt the roads in the winter, my old pickup is paying for that.
We have some very nice potholes. Sandwiched among terrible potholes, suspension-destroying potholes, and potholes that have been patched and are no longer a menace (for at least the next couple of months).
And, to break up the monotony, heat heave.
Rocky Mountains here too (hi Dolphin Boy). The paved roads are pretty good. The gravel/dirt road I live on is in bad shape, but it’s not a priority for them and I understand. At least they plow it in the winter.
I drive a lot of 2 lane mountain roads. What pisses me off to no end is how passing lanes are organized. They will create a passing lane and automatically funnel you into the right lane. That’s correct. What is wrong is that they then ‘end’ the right lane and you have to move over into what was the passing lane.
This sucks. I drive the speed limit but often get nimrods that pass in these passing lanes going 1 foot per minute faster than I. Then my lane ends and I have to deal with the idiot that didn’t actually pass me.
It should be the responsibility of the person passing to make sure he gets around you in time. It’s the passing lane that should end, not the right ‘travel’ lane. This is a very bad design that would only take signage to fix. It’s a real pet peeve of mine, and I’ll bitch about it until highway engineers get their heads out of their asses and fix it.