I’m sure there horrible roads everywhere, but here in southern Silicon Valley, we have the bragging rights! Considering the fiscal woes in these parts, things won’t be getting better anytime soon.
According to TRIP (The Road Information Program), here are the top (bottom?) 20:
Rank /Area /Percentage of roads in poor repair
1 San Jose 64%
2 Los Angeles 63%
3 Honolulu 62%
4 Concord 58%
5 San Francisco-Oakland 58%
6 New Orleans 55%
7 New York-Newark 53%
8 San Diego 50%
9 Indio-Palm Springs 47%
10 Baltimore 46%
11 Kansas City/Kansas 45%
12 Riverside-San Bernardino 44%
13 Oklahoma City 42%
14 Sacramento 42%
15 Omaha 42%
16 San Antonio 39%
17 Detroit 38%
18 Philadelphia 37%
19 Tulsa, Ok 36%
20 Dallas-Fort Worth 34%
#4 is Concord, but it doesn’t say which Concord. Concord, MA? Concord NH? California? North Carolina?
To tell the truth, although many roads in the Boston area are in miserable shape, Concord MA seems to have pretty good roads. I’d vote for NH or CA.
Since it’s a San Diego paper, Concord CA is probably the default. Plus, note that 7 of the other bottom 20 (7*5=35%) are in CA, which has only 10% of the U.S. population. Otherwise, only Texas and Oklahoma field multiple contenders.
I was gonna say something about Michigan having only one city on the list, but thinking about the cities that are on the list, Detroit might be the only city big enough to qualify.
From that, San Jose also wins the distinction of having the least good roads (2%), worse than Sacramento’s 4% or L.A.'s 5%. Oh well – you know it’s hard to maintain a road when it’s hot, dry, and sunny.
(From the other list, Hemet, CA, only had 1% good roads, and Santa Rosa, which is a reasonable size, 3%.)
Hey, Mr. Roadshow carries letters all the time about people who lost half their car to a pothole.
For a long time, when you went south on 880, the road turned to crap the moment you crossed from Alameda County to Santa Clara county. Though there is one road in Fremont, near me, which was perfect for testing the Prius shaky brakes after rough road bug.
I think we deserve special bonus points on this because our weather is so much better than Michigan or Boston. No freezing ice to break up our roads. So, eat our potholes.
I’m staggered that Baltimore is only #10 on that list. In my experience, driving in Baltimore is not so much a case of trying to avoid potholes as to work out the best path to take through a minefield. Some of the roads there are truly awful.
We’re pretty lucky here in our part of San Diego. Our local neighborhoods, where we do our shopping etc., have good roads, and outside of that most of our driving is on the freeways, which all seem pretty decent around here.
They do. I read it in the Mercury News this morning. I don’t know why it’s not on their website, if indeed it isn’t.
[OFF TOPIC] I always suspect that newpaper websites don’t contain EVERYTHING that the paper newspaper has, which is why I still subscribe to, and read, a paper newspaper every day. [\OFF TOPIC]
In Appendix B, there’s alot of California cities list near the top as well. Also, #7 (Victorville-Hesperia) is not in TX, it’s CA too. (my neck of the Joshua woods)
And as for Hemet…I can vouch for that 99% that are not good.
I live in Michigan, but I’m originally from the Bay Area. Every time I go to CA to visit my family, I’m shocked at how bad the roads are. My hometown (which is far too small to make this list) was rated as having the worst roads in the Bay Area a few years ago. And they’re really, really bad.
Michigan at least budgets for road repair, because everyone knows that the weather is harsh. I think in CA they forget that even though it doesn’t snow, you do have to repair the roads occasionally.
eta: I’m not sure how they identified urban areas, but I think my hometown might be included with Santa Rosa, which is #2 on Appendix B.
