Worst roads you have ever driven?

Jbte · November 04, 2016, 11:42:46 PM

What is the worst road you have ever driven?

In my case, its this one in Mexicooo...

this road its the main route between El Paso and Mexico City, segment between Cuencame and Santa Clara in Durango state. As soon I see this, I get nervous and start playing like "Mario Kart" or some other racing video game, where you can't lose....

Here a truck over passing another truck and dodging deep potholes, trash and other dangers in road...

At this image its necessary to go at the wrong way, due the other side is badly damaged... going over 60 mhp...

Here a victim of this road, at the bottom a car who got a flat tire and a pothole...

In this photo... something unusual for a US two lane highway... but hey its Mexico... we see a truck overpassing another truck in a segment under reparation, there is loose gravel so this a#$%#%e damaged my car... leaving me a small area to pass full of flying rocks to my winshield...

And there... i'm a victim of this horrible road... a damaged Mazada CX3 windshield...

There should be some more construction site security barrels, but there's nothing...

But anyway this is the new route... at least it's something...

The road was this damaged since 2014,almost three years later and nothing.... until now finally there are some repair work...
So, what are the worst roads you have ever driven? post some picture of bad roads you have driven...

Is theres any road worst than this in North America?
Cheers

oscar · November 05, 2016, 12:56:34 AM

At least that Mexican highway is paved, even if seriously potholed.

Perhaps the worst road I've ever driven is the long Sts'ailes logging road in southern British Columbia, which I drove from a pair of hot springs to BC 7 west of Harrison Hot Springs. The road was incredibly rough, to the point of knocking my extra spare tire and two storage bins in my camper shell off their mountings. It was also really narrow with few pullouts, and an oncoming logging truck could've been a real problem (the trucks always win such encounters), though all the overhanging tree branches scraping my roof indicated that logging trucks didn't use the road very often. Alas, no photos, except of the Sts'ailes route/km-marker signs.

Another dreadful road, where I did take a lot of pictures, is the unpaved Canol Road (signed as Yukon Territory route 6) between Ross River YT and the NWT border. That was almost 300 miles round-trip to the NWT border and back (the road continues without maintenance a short distance into the Northwest Territories, but is no longer driveable to its original north end in Norman Wells NT). 300 miles of pothole after pothole (at least the wheel-destroying potholes are marked with orange flags), mercifully interrupted only by some wood-deck one-lane bridges. Here's a photo illustrating how bad that highway can get:

freebrickproductions · November 05, 2016, 01:57:45 AM

TheHighwayMan3561 · November 05, 2016, 02:03:48 AM

In terms of roads that I had expectations would not be in shitty shape...it was a section of US 2 near Houlton, ME. We had left Houlton on I-95 but then realized we should double back for gas so I figured we could just loop back on 2. Bad idea. I got about a mile before deciding to go back to 95.

MNHighwayMan · November 05, 2016, 02:28:41 AM

Not even close to the worst road ever, but before it was resurfaced in the late 2000s/early 2010s, the section of MN-65 between McGrath and McGregor was memorably bad. I even remember that there were signs for the worst part that warned of "BUMPS: NEXT TEN MILES" or something to that effect.

LM117 · November 05, 2016, 05:02:58 AM

OP's pics aren't much different than I-75 in Michigan between the Ohio state line and I-275 near Monroe...at least as it was when I last drove through there in 2013. I could always tell where the state line was without looking at the signs.

sparker · November 05, 2016, 05:57:16 AM

When I lived out in the high desert (Hesperia) a few years back, I had regular occasion to travel over some of the worst dirt tracks masquerading as "city streets"; too many to individually cite! I will say that the worst state-maintained road I've been on to date is the unpaved section of CA 173 (now gated & inaccessible) north of Lake Arrowhead. Caltrans tried their best to keep it at least graded, but portions washed away or became severely rutted every year until the agency just gave up and shut it down.

Brandon · November 05, 2016, 06:49:24 AM

Quote from: LM117 on November 05, 2016, 05:02:58 AM
OP's pics aren't much different than I-75 in Michigan between the Ohio state line and I-275 near Monroe...at least as it was when I last drove through there in 2013. I could always tell where the state line was without looking at the signs.

That's not too bad, IMHO. Try coming into Illinois on any freeway other than a tollway. It's like this...

Indiana [hits border] Ill<bump>i<bump, thud>no<kabump>is<thunk, bump>.

CNGL-Leudimin · November 05, 2016, 08:02:37 AM

It has to be this road. The whole stretch from CariÃ±ena to Fuendetodos is in such a bad shape, it would be better to go off-road. At least now I have fully clinched A-220, not without that stretch of self-torture.

thenetwork · November 05, 2016, 10:24:06 AM

I met my #1 pick this summer in East Cleveland, OH. Because the I-90/East Shoreway was completely closed due to a rollover accident on a Friday afternoon at rush hour, the only way out of Downtown was to use the surface streets, which were all backed up.

US-20/Euclid Avenue was pretty much the only viable option east of University Circle, but that was a mess as well, so when we crossed into East Cleveland, we took a parallel road, Forest Hill/Terrace Ave. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5242455,-81.5827264,313m/data=!3m1!1e3

The high-crime city of East Cleveland itself is bankrupt, many traffic lights are broken or in flash mode, and there are roads with potholes and we were following many cars also taking the Euclid Avenue "bypass" of bumper to bumper traffic.

One block in particular was between Forest Hills Blvd and Belmore, where the old Huron Road Hospital was recently torn down. I swear I have never seen sooo many 1-2 foot craters in my life in just a one block area. Every car was using the entire road zigzagging around what we could and going 2 MPH through what we couldn't. Across from the old hospital was a 30-40 year old apartment complex that looked to be in good shape. That closed down a couple years back, and now that building has been completely gutted due to vandalism. The block looked like a Middle-East town where a bomb went off.

One block later, the street turned normal again. I'm surprised the city wouldn't close off that block, because it was that bad.

EDIT: Just found a video related to the street I referred to. This video was taken in January, 2016 -- in the middle of winter. I drove it in June, probably twice as bad as in January!!!

<iframe width="640" height="360" style="border-width:0" src="http://interactive.tegna-media.com/video/embed/embed.html?id=1464607&type=video&title=East%20Cleveland%20Potholes&site=95&playerid=6918249996581&dfpid=32805352&dfpposition=Video_prestream_external§ion=home"></iframe>

Max Rockatansky · November 05, 2016, 10:45:34 AM

I'm going to redo this one since my photos are up now. I'm limiting this to paved roads only since there are WAY, WAY, WAY, too many dirt roads like the El Camino Del Diablo that would hog up the list.

First up Mineral King Road in Tulare County, California. This is a 25 mile road from CA 198 in Three Rivers up to Mineral King Valley up in the Sierras. The road is essentially paved 85% of the way but I have a sneaking suspicion that the dirt sections are covered asphalt. You gain about 6,000 feet on this road and it's about a lane and a half the entire way. The last major improvements were back in the 1920s and there was a plan by the Division of Highways and even Caltrans to blow this out to CA 276. You need to use 1st or 2nd gear heading back down, definitely not exactly a drive for someone who just does urban driving:

The Parkfield Grade is a roadway between CA 198 west of Coalinga to the village of Parkfield on top of the San Andreas Fault. Within Fresno County the road is paved which becomes well maintained dirt for a couple miles in Monterrey County. The asphalt section in Fresno County isn't so much rough but it's narrow, crosses several semi-regularly washes, and has heavy rockfalls that have you either stopping or swinging to the other side of the road to avoid running them over. The dirt section in Monterrey County is very well maintained but also very steep. I would personally recommend using low gear given it's only a lane wide and probably 15-20% near the county line. Once the road levels out it becomes poorly maintained and pitted asphalt which crosses several old bridges to Parkfield and Fault.

Don't really have any pictures available for Bitterwater Road but it's just south of Parkfield. The asphalt is some of the worst I've encountered on a maintained road in Central California. There are plenty of dips makes the breaking asphalt worse since you'll probably be going 45-55 MPH when you sneak up on it. Not a good place to pop a tire, but the road is a handy short cut from CA 46/41 to CA 58:

Kaiser Pass Road is basically a continuation of CA 168 from it's terminus at Huntington Lake. The road is very wide and has a ton of parking for the first 5 miles before becoming a single lane with steep grades and terrible asphalt. This road goes to go some of the high reservoir lakes in the Sierras and Mono Hot Springs. Surprisingly the road has a lot of traffic for what it is which makes the prospects of having to back up going uphill very real:

The Oatman Highway out in Arizona has always been pretty bad even in spite of recent repaves. The road was US 66 from 1926 to 1953 which passed over Sitgreaves Pass through the gold mines to Oatman. Before the repave the road was extremely jagged and full of pot holes, now it's just narrow and you have to contend with open range on mountain grades. Burros wander freely even in Oatman and it's not unusual to unchecked bovine. South of Oatman the road is still in bad shape past the Boundary Cone to I-40:

On the California Side CR 66 in San Bernardino County is another poorly maintained section of Old US 66. The road is good in places but extremely rough and jagged almost everywhere else. The worst part is west of Amboy to Ludlow which probably will make you drive down the center stripe to avoid pot holes quite often. The area has a lot of ancient roadways like Kelbaker Road, Kelso-Cima Road, Cima Road, and Nipton Road up in the Mojave Preserve which are degraded even to a worse extent:

There is a lot more from this year I want to post, I'm just going through what I have handy and put on the forum so far. This would be an absurdly long list if I literally sat down and thought about things like County Routes or back Country Roads in all the places I've lived like Florida and Michigan.

Max Rockatansky · November 05, 2016, 11:44:42 AM

Sherman Pass Road belongs on this list for rockfall alone, this one is the only non-State Highway high pass of the Sierras. I've driven this road twice and I've never found the rockfall to be bad coming up from Mountain Route 99 at the Kern River but rather coming down to J41 from the Mount Whitney Overlook. Basically the road is cut directly into a hill which isn't pushed back. Given the elevation has a lot of tree growth that means there is a ton of rock fall mixed in with cones. I wouldn't say the road is bad if you could find a way to whiddle the rock fall out....but you'll spend a lot of time having to swing to the other lane. Coupled with the high grades exiting the Kern River Canyon and remoteness of the area this can be a huge problem. At least the Forest Service posts a reasonable speed limit otherwise it would be a 55 MPH zone which would probably break down a bunch of cars:

Speaking of J41, that's the road Sherman Pass Road becomes as it enters Tulare County and Nine Mile Canyon Road as it enters Inyo County. Kennedy Meadows is pretty tame since it's basically just a quiet valley that's cleared out but the road gets nuts as it approaches Nine Mile Canyon. Basically the grade is 15% or higher almost all the way down the Canyon to US 395. The asphalt isn't the best but it isn't breaking up, it does narrow to a single lane for considerable length. I never found rock fall to be the hazard but rather other drivers who don't know what they are doing or even random sky divers:

CA 155 is a state highway from Delano at CA 99 to Lake Isabella at CA 178. Most of the road is pretty good until you get towards the final climb to Alta Sierra at some 6,000 feet and the descent down to Lake Isabella. It appears there was a recent forest fire near Alta Sierra and the roadway is in terrible shape. The road is breaking up badly and has a ton of lose gravel everywhere which can make the sudden twisted turns kind of difficult. The good news is that this road doesn't get a ton of traffic which means you won't be riding slower drivers or vice versa:

Speaking of Mountain Route 99 I almost forgot how bad this one can get for road surface. Basically the road drops pretty fast from Johnsondale to the Kern River where it intersects Sherman Pass Road. The road surface is in completely awful shape descending to the Kern River which really isn't ideal with the hairpins. The road is still pretty rough but not too overwhelming all the way to New Kernville:

Another road in bad shape near Bakersfield is Bodfish-Caliente Road which traverses the Sierras from CA 178 to CA 58. The road is an old mining access route and has a terrible surface that hasn't been maintained in decades. The down hill grades are pretty significant, breaking up, and traverse open range.

Ebbetts Pass and Pacific Grade Summit along CA 4 is probably the most difficult stretch of California State Highway the state has to offer. The climb to Pacific Grade Summit from CA 49 in Angel's Camp is very easy but the road goes down to a wide single lane east of CA 207 at the Bear Valley Ski Resort. Despite the single lane the road surface is very good but there are three significant hazards; 20% plus grades, cattle, and other drivers cutting corners short. The descent from Pacific Grade Summit is the most difficult and most steep which I would recommend 1st gear while Ebbetts Pass is significantly more gentle and can probably be done with 2nd gear. Once you get down Ebbetts Pass the road becomes two lane again and isn't bad from there to CA 89. There is active cattle being driven which require you to back up and park somewhere if you encounter them like I did, you'll be sitting for awhile:

Max Rockatansky · November 05, 2016, 12:20:01 PM

Still more good-bad road stuff for this year....

Sonora Pass on CA 108 is probably the second most difficult State Highway in California behind CA 4 Pacific Grade Summit/Ebbetts Pass. The eastern slope has an infamous 26% grade in one section but it isn't sustained as long as the 24% is on Pacific Grade Summit. The road is a full two lanes here and doesn't have much hazards aside the huge grade on the eastern slope of Sonora Pass. The western slope is a much longer downhill grade to about 6,000 feet and I thought the grades were sustained much longer. There is some rock fall here but you also have problems with drivers who don't know what brake fade is that are trying to go way too fast. There are some sections that might require a couple miles of 2nd gear use on both slopes...or at least you ought to consider it:

The Old and New Priest Grades both offer something different. I wouldn't classify the New Priest Grade which carries CA 120 as a "worst road" since the surface is good and the grade is generally less 6% but that ain't what most people end up taking. Almost everyone heading to Yosemite east on CA 120 ends up taking the Old Priest Grade since it shows a short cut on their GPS units....doesn't say anything about the sustained 17% uphill grade. Anything but cars are banned going on the Old Priest Grade, definitely requires 2nd gear down hill unless you have vented four wheel disc:

J16 is a signed County Route heading from CA 49 in Bear Valley to CA 59/CR 59 near Snelling. The road surface on J16 is complete crap and is falling apart badly, especially from Bear Valley to Hornitos. There is a pretty decent downhill grade to Hornitos as well which doesn't help since you are already bouncing around from pot holes:

One more before I clog up this thread too much...I haven't barely even done anything outside of California.

Basically this is the "supposed" mack daddy of bad paved roads in California with Blackrock Road which is located east Pine Flat Lake. Even to get out here you have to take Trimmer Springs Road which is very rough shape. Blackrock Road is a access road used by PG&E to access the Blackrock Reservoir. The road is largely single lane with an infamous cliff face section above the company town of Balch Camp. There are a couple steel bridges with wooden decks up on the cliff-faced section of Blackrock which were built back in the 1960s. The road surface is a complete disaster throughout and you'll definitely have to back up for a good long if you encounter another vehicle north of Balch Camp. The road continues past the Blackrock Reservoir to Dinky Creek but it becomes a dirt surface. I would say this is the "worst" paved road in California given that the traffic count is basically non-existent but it is definitely in the worst shape overall. I would classify Mineral King Road and Kaiser Pass Road as worse due to similar surface conditions along with an infinitely higher count of drivers:

Well that's it for me for now. I think the OP was getting more at "normal" roadways that might be in bad shape, I just went with the assumption that meant just everything "paved."

I'm always up for a good challenge, I don't think there was too much I posted that people would go out of their way to regularly traverse. There is a lot of roads on the Colorado Plateau, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Rockies that are surfaced that probably deserve a shout out on this thread also that I haven't talked about.

hbelkins · November 05, 2016, 05:17:38 PM

This could be interpreted several different ways. I've been on a ton of local roads, logging roads, oil field roads, etc, that were horrible.

But for purposes of my contribution, I will discuss roads on a state highway system and will focus more on pavement conditions than alignment.

In recent years, I'd say the worst was KY 1679, the Little Shepherd Trail at the top of Pine Mountain that runs between US 421 and US 119. When my dad and I drove it about 20 or so years ago, it was in terrible shape. Most of it is one-lane. At that time, much of it was gravel and very badly rutted out. The road is about 40 miles long and it took us four hours to drive its entire length. I think most of it has since been paved.

I'd also add VA Secondary 623, the back way from VA 42 to Burke's Garden in Smyth (I think) County over into Tazewell County. It's a one-lane gravel road with many ruts and gullies. I drove it back in the summer and really expected more from a state-maintained non-dead-end road in Virginia.

In my youth, the worst state highway in my area was the then-unsigned KY 1144 in Lee County. My county is a Republican county and Kentucky has only elected three Republican governors in my lifetime and in the two or three decades preceding my birth. When I was young, the road was gravel. During the administration of Republican governor Louie Nunn, this road and several other gravel state roads in Republican counties got their first-ever coat of blacktop. After Nunn went out of office, no maintenance whatsoever was done on this road. It developed countless potholes and areas where the pavement was destroyed. Chunks of broken blacktop were everywhere and the road was basically going back to gravel. I traveled this road every day going to high school and learned to dodge the bad spots when I started driving. It finally got patched and then resurfaced in the early 1980s and has been well-maintained since. But it was terrible when I was in school.

As for US routes, portions of US 33 and US 50 in West Virginia are awful. I drove 50 from the Virginia line all the way to Clarksburg, then 33 from I-79 to I-77, and could have tolerated the poor alignments a little better if the pavement had been in satisfactory condition.

And someone above mentioned I-75 in Michigan. The one time I was on that route, a few years ago, heading south of Detroit toward Chicago, the road was rough and riddled with potholes. Hard to believe that road conditions would improve once one enters Ohio from another state, but that was sure the case here.

pumpkineater2 · November 05, 2016, 05:58:24 PM

Worst road I've ever driven is I-580 in the hilly section east of San Francisco. I've never seen a freeway in such terrible shape:https://goo.gl/maps/8eyArSzQg4G2

Max Rockatansky · November 05, 2016, 07:51:43 PM

Quote from: hbelkins on November 05, 2016, 05:17:38 PM
This could be interpreted several different ways. I've been on a ton of local roads, logging roads, oil field roads, etc, that were horrible.

But for purposes of my contribution, I will discuss roads on a state highway system and will focus more on pavement conditions than alignment.

In recent years, I'd say the worst was KY 1679, the Little Shepherd Trail at the top of Pine Mountain that runs between US 421 and US 119. When my dad and I drove it about 20 or so years ago, it was in terrible shape. Most of it is one-lane. At that time, much of it was gravel and very badly rutted out. The road is about 40 miles long and it took us four hours to drive its entire length. I think most of it has since been paved.

I'd also add VA Secondary 623, the back way from VA 42 to Burke's Garden in Smyth (I think) County over into Tazewell County. It's a one-lane gravel road with many ruts and gullies. I drove it back in the summer and really expected more from a state-maintained non-dead-end road in Virginia.

In my youth, the worst state highway in my area was the then-unsigned KY 1144 in Lee County. My county is a Republican county and Kentucky has only elected three Republican governors in my lifetime and in the two or three decades preceding my birth. When I was young, the road was gravel. During the administration of Republican governor Louie Nunn, this road and several other gravel state roads in Republican counties got their first-ever coat of blacktop. After Nunn went out of office, no maintenance whatsoever was done on this road. It developed countless potholes and areas where the pavement was destroyed. Chunks of broken blacktop were everywhere and the road was basically going back to gravel. I traveled this road every day going to high school and learned to dodge the bad spots when I started driving. It finally got patched and then resurfaced in the early 1980s and has been well-maintained since. But it was terrible when I was in school.

As for US routes, portions of US 33 and US 50 in West Virginia are awful. I drove 50 from the Virginia line all the way to Clarksburg, then 33 from I-79 to I-77, and could have tolerated the poor alignments a little better if the pavement had been in satisfactory condition.

And someone above mentioned I-75 in Michigan. The one time I was on that route, a few years ago, heading south of Detroit toward Chicago, the road was rough and riddled with potholes. Hard to believe that road conditions would improve once one enters Ohio from another state, but that was sure the case here.

Since you got me thinking about I-75 in the Detroit area I think that I'll break this down into sub-categories for "all-time" worsts for me:

Interstate Highway
- The honor here goes to I-4 for it's entirety, especially the section through downtown Orlando. The route is chock full of way too many people, many who bring poorly maintained vehicles onto the freeway because it's the only free limited access road in the Orlando Metro Area. The old alignment in Orlando is completely awful in design with narrow everything and a really bad surface. Perhaps I-4 Ultimate might bring some sanity to this section of road but it won't negate the cluster-f amount of traffic. From Sanford to Daytona the road is being expanded but it was always a battle when it was only a four lane fighting truckers. From Tampa to Disney World you'd best be going over 80 MPH or you'll get run off the road. Honorable mentions have to go to; I-405 in California, I-5 San Diego to CA 126, I-10 to CA 86, and I-95 from Boston to the South Carolina State Line. All of them offer something wretchedly horrible.

US Route
- I hate to say this but it's really got to go to US 1 on the Overseas Highway. The surface ain't great but that's not what makes it bad. It's the fact that the road has enough traffic to merit a full divided four-lane and is stuck on a mostly two-lane alignment that makes it bad. Once you've driven the 127 miles from Florida City to Key West you really begin to understand how bad that road is and how dangerous it can get. Some honorable mentions go to US 89 north of Browning, MT to the Canadian border for incredibly rotted surface and US 191 from I-80 in Wyoming to US 40 in Utah for much of the same with poor surfacing.

Other Freeways
- I haven't had a chance to see how the Lodge Freeway/M10 has turned out with the construction projects in recent years but it was always infamously bad for design and surface condition. CA 99 from Bakersfield to Sacramento isn't in the best shape given the high truck volume and includes some really poor designs like right-on/right-off ramps. Apparently I'm not alone in thinking it's a bad freeway given that there has been a lot of press about it being named the most dangerous freeway in the country.

State Route
- Someone mentioned CA 173 earlier in the thread, I would agree with that if it was still completely open. I would give the honors to AZ 88 for not having a really bad asphalt surface for the first half but not keeping up with grading on the dirt section. Basically the road was in terrible shape last month when I visited which was a real disappointment given how much improvement in the grading was made to the dirt section the decade prior. I don't understand how a state maintained highway could be that wash boarded, especially when stacked up to something like UT 261 which draws a similar crowd.

County Route
- I'm going to include anything that is a County Route and is signed with an actual number. That being the case I'd give it to Mineral King Road for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, it is technically Mountain Route 375 which are maintained by Tulare County.

Dirt or Unmaintained Roads
- Simple this would be the El Camino Del Diablo given it's heavy duty off-road trail. It's not such much the terrain that's bad it's the length of the road south of the Goldwater Range and how remote you are. There is a lot of crossings from the Mexican Border through the area, basically my off-road buddies and I were basically told nicely by Border Patrol that it wasn't a good idea to come back. Terrain wise there is a lot worse, but you're rarely basically out there like you're on the moon anywhere else I know.

Funny, I really would have thought that something from New Mexico, Texas, or Nevada would pop to mind but I guess not.

noelbotevera · November 05, 2016, 07:56:09 PM

Belt Parkway and I-278. It's a real white knuckle stretch. People are maniacs, the road is poorly maintained and narrow. Basically, god bless you if...oh wait, nope. Kennon Road in the Philippines takes the cake.

ColossalBlocks · November 05, 2016, 08:47:21 PM

US 45 in between Jackson, TN and Tupelo, MI

https://www.google.com/maps/place/US-45,+Guys,+TN+38339/@35.0791954,-89.0522834,9.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x887ea8bda4738b67:0xa447a478cbb6fa5d!8m2!3d35.0228314!4d-88.5239367

Over 30 miles of a limit that does not go over 35, and there are cops all over Jackson, even at 2 in the morning. And Henderson, TN is full of rednecks.

Another route is a local route, up until 2006, Route JJ. Runs parallel to it's high traffic neighbor, US 67. It terminates both ways at US 67. Until 2006, it had a bunch of bumps, potholes, pavement patches, and those inch thick lines that they use to patch up cracks.
The county finally decided to repave it.

Another road is Fountain City Road. It used to be SR 110 connecting US 67, and SR 21. Since the newer 110 was built, it has since not been maintained. The only area where it is maintained is around each intersection. And the only maintenance since 2010 on there is where it crosses over Haverstick Creek, they built a new bridge, and it took them over a couple years.

Another one is I 255 on the Illinois side, it is far more bumpy then the MoDot maintained side.

Another road is I 55 in between St Louis and Cape Girardeau, a ton of deer at night, little to no towns a long this route accept Bloomsdale, St Genevieve, Perryville, and Jackson.

Any road around Branson/Kimberling City is pretty bad for traffic, and lots of soccer mom SUVs.

74/171FAN · November 05, 2016, 08:57:40 PM

I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) EB where it exits off itself in only the right lane (other 2 lanes go to Exits 347A and 347B). (with a "TO" error as well that was what messed me up) It was the only time the configuration of a road has actually made me mad and yell to myself over it.

kphoger · November 05, 2016, 09:21:58 PM

Well, I've driven plenty of roads that are little more than tire tracks through the dirt, and this past summer I drive literally four hours each way through the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico off-pavement. But the OP seems to intend we discuss paved routes.

For paved routes, the worst was Coahuila state highway 103 between General Cepeda and Parras back in 2012 or 2013. The pot holes were a lot like those in the OP's pictures, except there were several stretches where the holes literally extended from edge to edge and it was impossible to avoid them. Some of those stretches were a half-mile long or more. I don't know how our tires survived. We were traveling with two vehicles and, in the one behind ours, two girls were sitting on top out the sunroof; every pot hole, we thought they were going to bite it, and the driver eventually told them to get back inside.

In the US, it would be Oklahoma state highway 136 between the Kansas state line and Guymon, due to the frequent patches that looked like the highway department had just shoveled some asphalt onto the highway and called it good, not bothering to smooth it out or make it level with the rest of the road. Google street view indicates those patches stayed that way for several years.

kphoger · November 05, 2016, 09:29:12 PM

Quote from: ColossalBlocks on November 05, 2016, 08:47:21 PM
Another one is I 255 on the Illinois side, it is far more bumpy then the MoDot maintained side.

This one isn't so bad in a passenger vehicle. But, back when I drove an Isuzu cab-over box truck for work, there were stretches of I-255 where the front wheels would bounce so much that a strong cross wind would actually push the truck over by a foot or so. This would happen with every seam in the concrete unless I drove 15 mph under the prevailing speed of traffic, so I was resigned to driving with the steering wheel constantly positioned off-center: bounce to the right, steer to the left, bounce to the right, steer to the left...

ColossalBlocks · November 05, 2016, 09:50:16 PM

Yeah, I agree. While i live far south of St Louis, i still travel on 255 time to time.

hbelkins · November 05, 2016, 11:31:12 PM

Quote from: ColossalBlocks on November 05, 2016, 08:47:21 PM
US 45 in between Jackson, TN and Tupelo, MI

https://www.google.com/maps/place/US-45,+Guys,+TN+38339/@35.0791954,-89.0522834,9.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x887ea8bda4738b67:0xa447a478cbb6fa5d!8m2!3d35.0228314!4d-88.5239367

Over 30 miles of a limit that does not go over 35, and there are cops all over Jackson, even at 2 in the morning. And Henderson, TN is full of rednecks.

I drove US 45 from Jackson to the MS 2 exit last month and have to complaints about the general condition of the road. Tennessee is annoying in that many stretches of four- and five-lane highway are signed for 45 mph, and there are those damnable red light cameras here and there, but there's nothing along that route that would qualify it as "worst." And I don't remember a 30-mile stretch of the route with such a low speed limit.

mgk920 · November 05, 2016, 11:54:00 PM

It was back in March of 1994, so it has likely been rebuilt long ago, but when I visited someone in the Denver, CO area at that time, I found what I considered to be the worst ever surface condition of an interstate highway that I have experienced being I-270 between I-76 and I-70. Since studded tires are legal year round in Colorado, they cause significant damage to roadway surfaces, especially in built-up areas, and the stud rutting damage to I-270 at the time was such that the concrete was breaking through in places.

There was also similar damage elsewhere in the area's freeways, much of the system was like driving on cobblestones.

Mike

Takumi · November 06, 2016, 08:58:42 AM

VA 189 and 272 are pretty rough. Video from when another forum member and I drove it in 2012.
https://youtu.be/6JM_4WmhF_M
(Also, excuse my poor shifting in this video. I was still learning to drive stick.)

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Worst roads you have ever driven?