Roads better or worse in your state?

EddieWalker · Mar 23, 2014

I'm from CA and the roads where really bad there and getting worse when I left in 2002. A lot of the money raised for roads was used for other social programs and there was a never ending game of raising more with more taxes to fix the roads. Since the roads never got fixed, they always needed more taxes to fix them.

Here in TX, the money raised for the roads has to be used for the roads. You cannot redistribute the money to other programs. Our roads are great, the only drawback is they seem to repave some of them every three to four years. The road I drive to get home has been paved three times since I moved out to the land in 2005.

Eddie

MacLawn · Mar 23, 2014

Georgia has had some of the best roads in recent surveys. Mississippi roads are terrible. Living in two states (don't try it!), it's amazing how much stress bad roads add to your life! We just got back from a week in Georgia last night (to Mississippi) and just driving to church and back made me nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Makes me glad I'm retiring in Georgia! I love Mississippi, but, whew, the road difference takes a lot out of ye! Wears me slap out driving here compared to driving in Georgia.

Just drove through Arkansas too last week! Oh me. Glad to reach Missouri when I did! I think any of y'all boys retiring in a different state should do some road condition research before buying in a BAD ROAD state! I'll say it again - driving on rough roads is bad for ye blood pressure!

jel1988 · Mar 23, 2014

Currently I'm in SC and the roads down here have been steadily falling apart for the last 20 years that we have been coming. The SCDOT recently stated that their revenue has fallen over the same period of time as vehilces use less fuel. They stated that current revenue is about a quarter of what they required to maintain existing roads. The idea of raising one of the lowest gas taxes in the US would never fly, the politicians can't agree on a local one cent gas tax as they feel it is onerus on the public. The politician have proposed a solution, place a fuel economy tax on vehicles, the better the mileage the higher the tax.

joemd11 · Mar 23, 2014

Pa roads and bridges are in terrible shape. With all the taxes we pay for road maint. we should have some of the best in the country. Eddie is exactly right. Tax collected for road upkeep gets diverted to other programs, the roads get worse, then they come back wanting more money for the roads. It is really starting to p*ss me off! This is not a partisan political rant because both parties are guilty. The only difference is who the "beneficiaries" are and it is never the middle class. I feel a little better now.

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sailorman · Mar 23, 2014

Love my state . Lived here all of my 66 yrs. But, Louisiana roads in bad shape . Hard to build good roads on soft soil , wet lands an swamps . Particularly embarrassing on highways at state lines . Not a god presentations to tourists .

300UGUY · Mar 23, 2014

Seems like everybody thinks their roads suck. Maybe it's a national thing, we have a obsolete infrastructure and no reliable funding?

dave1949 · Mar 23, 2014

300UGUY said:
Seems like everybody thinks their roads suck. Maybe it's a national thing, we have a obsolete infrastructure and no reliable funding?

If fuel taxes are not indexed to inflation, there is really no mystery about it--there aren't as many real dollars being spent as there used to be. The only thing working for us would be improved efficiency of road building and maintenance. The price of asphalt is tied closely to the price of oil.

EddieWalker · Mar 23, 2014

dave1949 said:
If fuel taxes are not indexed to inflation, there is really no mystery about it--there aren't as many real dollars being spent as there used to be. The only thing working for us would be improved efficiency of road building and maintenance. The price of asphalt is tied closely to the price of oil.

Or the politicians have figured out how to take the money raised for roads and spend it on pet projects that help them get elected.

Eddie

forgeblast · Mar 24, 2014

I was lauging at the description of potholes here is one that is near me.
Archbald Pothole State Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The pothole is 38 feet deep and has an elliptical shape. The diameter of the pothole decreases downward. The largest diameter is 42 feet by 24 feet. At the bottom it is 17 feet by 14 feet. The pothole has a volume of about 18,600 cubic feet, so could hold about 140,000 gallons. It would take 35 fire truck tankers to fill the pothole.

dmccarty · Mar 24, 2014

When I moved to NC from FLA, I was really impressed with the quality of the roads. Even the rural roads in the county where I know live, where in great shape....

A couple of decades later and the roads are bad. This because of two reasons best I can tell. First, the population growth in my area of NC is huge. Roads that used to see only a few cars a day know have thousands and more people move to NC every day. More than a few years ago, maybe back around 2000, the state had a bucket of money set aside for the roads. This was tax money that had been raised over the years but not spent. At the time, the state had loads of money, the economy was good, so instead of saving the money when the economy went bad, they took the road money and spent it elsewhere. There were arguments about this at the time but the party that has run NC for scores and scores of years spent the money.

Then there is flat out incompetence. I40 was expanded which was expensive and made work commutes heck. They poured nice concrete so the road would last....

Well, DOT did not inspect the pours correctly and the builders did not use metal pins to connect the slab so the concrete started to crack which created large and deep potholes in a very short period of time. The builder had to come back and redo much of the work. I think the builder had to pay for all/most of the rework but the state might have kicked some money in as well.

With the population growth, cities need to expand the roads so DOT has to decide to build new roads or fix old ones. Given there is not enough money to do both, new roads seem to get the money vs repairing existing roads. We pay some of the highest fuel taxes but you would not know it from some of the road conditions. Most of the road damage I see is from loaded dump trucks around new subdivisions. I have seen roads completely demolished by the dump trucks and I do mean demolished. Roads that were 55 MPH but had to be driven at 10-15 MPH because the pavement was just in pieces and the road bed pot holed.

Later,
Dan