QOTD: Potholes, Dips, and Craters - Oh My!
Our roads are a mess. It doesn’t seem to matter where in America (or Canada) one travels, there stands a very good chance that one will find crumbling infrastructure. In fact, the United States ranks eighth in the world in national infrastructure quality, behind Germany and the U.K., but above France and Canada, according to one recent study. Some days, it sure seems worse than that.
Which leads us to today’s question: what’s the worst road in your neck of the woods?
We don’t mean the most dangerous roads. Those are terrible, too, but often earn their badge through some combination of poor design and bad traffic patterns. No, what we mean in this post are the roads most likely to shoot a strut right through the hood of your car.
Back in June, Business Insider ranked a few states in terms of their appalling road conditions. New York was ranked eighth, laying claim to 114,365 miles of public road, 28 percent of them rated as being in poor condition. Heavy traffic (both in terms of weight and volume) combined with winter conditions that promote tarmac-warping freeze/thaw cycles all conspire to scupper the pavement in New York.
As a percentage, the same study reported that Washington, D.C. has the country’s worst roads, with a shocking 95 percent of the district’s 1,507 miles of public roads being classified as “poor.” As a function of basic math, small states which have a relatively low total mileage of public roads fared poorly in terms of a percentage.
Leading the way in terms of total miles of cratered pavement is California, no surprise for anyone who’s plied roads in the Golden State. About half of the state’s roads, which total nearly 200,000 miles worth, are said to be in poor condition, according to that same report.
What’s the worst road near your home? We’re sure there’s plenty of them.
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
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Where's that classic Citroen suspension? If only tojo could do it cheap & reliable.
Just about any non-arterial street in downtown Seattle, Belltown, South Lake Union, and Queen Anne is a complete $h1t show. It's a crater field of ruts, bumps, and metal plates from the endless construction. Heavy equipment and trucks have buckled the pavement, the city has no motivation to repave while massive construction is going on, and some of these streets truly resemble the roadways of Managua or Granada, Nicaragua. Roads are also covered in construction barriers and portable no-parking signs that investigation after investigation shows that construction companies are abusing to secure free parking for themselves. In many places outside of arterials, they are barely 2 lanes wide. I hate driving down there.