So, which state does suck the most?
In my opinion, IDiOT. Do I really need to say more?
Michigan
Nexus 6P
For dealing with a city the size of Chicago, Illinois does a staggeringly poor job designing and managing road maintenance.
I cover 10 states regularly for my job. Illinois easily wins this award.
There isn't even a close 2nd IMO.
Quote from: silverback1065 on April 12, 2017, 09:16:09 AM
Michigan
Nexus 6P
They certainly were in the 1990s... I love the Pure Michigan memes about potholes:
(https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.iTPYMYbISRtI4nFL9xlQAwEsC1&pid=15.1&P=0&w=273&h=166)
(https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.tJz8p2_CFAwxqngUx2HdxQEsEm&pid=15.1&P=0&w=196&h=193)
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/13/93/b8/1393b8119454ab52949c394d98b3aa99.jpg)
I gotta go with Illinois as well...
I don't know, I think New Mexico is worse than Illinois.
Pennsylvania might be able to do a little better.
IDOT routes all of their transportation dollars toward Chicago and its immediate suburbs, and building pointless freeways in the middle of nowhere. I live on the outskirts of District 1, and we receive NOTHING when it comes to roadway maintenance. Since I was 12 years old, I've noticed that the state roads in the outer reaches of Chicago suburbia are given little to no care at all. Will County's roads are better than the state roads in Will County--same with Kane County. The Chicago DOT is even worse, though. Chicago's city streets are by and large the most pathetic effort I've seen. I find Indiana to be crappier than Illinois, actually, depending on where you go.
Oklahoma puts chip seal on 65-mph divided highways and whenever it patches potholes, the patch sits around six inches above the rest of the road so it's almost as bad as if they didn't patch it at all. The paint used on roads appears to be as durable as sidewalk chalk, and in the rain there may as well be no markings at all.
Our bridges have killed out-of-state motorists by dropping chunks of concrete onto an active Interstate. When a similar tendency was detected on another bridge, the fix was apparently to wrap the bridge in plastic sheeting to catch the falling chunks, and it remained that way for several years until the bridge was replaced.
Do I win?
Illinois, at least on IDOT maintained roads. Although I can't say Indiana is a whole lot better. Driving on I-65 you'll see tons of debris and guardrail damage and quite a lot of potholes on the road. That's always one hell of a drive. As far as I know, Illinois never had to shut down a major interstate for over 10 miles due to maintenance before. Wouldn't surprise me to be wrong about that though.
Here's an exercise for all concerned: drive south on I-5 from Oregon into California, and notice what happens to the pavement at the border! It goes from smooth well-maintained asphalt to original '70's concrete, patched regularly with tar/asphalt "fixes" -- and with a very significant difference in ride -- not to CA's advantage! This sort of thing is more or less repeated with I-80 WB at the NV/CA state line -- so it's not limited to one particular Caltrans district. One thing -- both of these situations are at a 3K+ elevation, so perennial winter conditions definitely affect the road conditions. Nevertheless, the difference between states is startling and seemingly more pronounced than other state-to-state variations.
Quote from: ajlynch91 on April 13, 2017, 01:37:31 AM
Illinois, at least on IDOT maintained roads. Although I can't say Indiana is a whole lot better. Driving on I-65 you'll see tons of debris and guardrail damage and quite a lot of potholes on the road. That's always one hell of a drive. As far as I know, Illinois never had to shut down a major interstate for over 10 miles due to maintenance before. Wouldn't surprise me to be wrong about that though.
65 in indiana is garbage going to chicago, it's a never ending patch fest. it's better taking 52 and 41 honestly.
the laporte district of indot is considered to be the worst one.
In the east, there's IMO a clear winner - PennDOT.
Enter Penn's Woods from Maryland or New York, and it is pretty obvious.
Even when PennDOT totally rebuilds a freeway, they seem to prefer to keep the old (and usually substandard) freeway design.
I forgot to mention! Vermont's roads are in dismal condition, and are often underbuilt.
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 12, 2017, 11:35:14 PM
Oklahoma puts chip seal on 65-mph divided highways and whenever it patches potholes, the patch sits around six inches above the rest of the road so it's almost as bad as if they didn't patch it at all. The paint used on roads appears to be as durable as sidewalk chalk, and in the rain there may as well be no markings at all.
Our bridges have killed out-of-state motorists by dropping chunks of concrete onto an active Interstate. When a similar tendency was detected on another bridge, the fix was apparently to wrap the bridge in plastic sheeting to catch the falling chunks, and it remained that way for several years until the bridge was replaced.
Do I win?
Is that it? Or is there more?
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 12, 2017, 11:35:14 PM
Do I win?
Even when ODOT puts some thought into maintenance, the results are often almost comically bad.
Example: U.S. 169 in Tulsa, between S.H. 51 and I-44. Several years ago, much of the crumbling concrete was sawn out and replaced with concrete patches, then short sections of rebar were grouted into slots cut across the construction joints to keep the slabs from shifting. The the whole shebang was ground even to smooth the ride. Didn't take long for the existing pavement along the edges of the patches to continue to crumble, along with the rest of the pavement. Add to that District 8's tendency to haphazardly stuff asphalt into the voids, and the result is a craptastic patchwork mess. Fortunately, ODOT plans to put an asphalt overlay over that section of 169 this year. We'll see how well that holds up.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1136925,-95.8597994,3a,66.8y,220.52h,62.65t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s49fvp9dOleHb7qughsG62A!2e0 (https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1136925,-95.8597994,3a,66.8y,220.52h,62.65t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s49fvp9dOleHb7qughsG62A!2e0)
I travel a lot between Ohio and Indiana, and the difference between the two is really stark. Indiana's roads are pot-hole filled, narrow messes. The signage on the new I-69 leg southwest of Bloomington is cheap. It mirrors the approach to infrastructure and social services in the entire state - do the least possible.
Ohio, on the other hand, I think has really fantastic roads overall. The interstates in particular are usually very smooth, with excellent maintenance, and good design. Our public transportation suffers because roads take up the vast majority of the state transportation budget.
My vote is for either Illinois or Oklahoma. I did use to have a page-by-page calendar with funny made-up events that happened on each day in history. One of them was about finding a whole yet-unknown civilization hidden inside a Detroit pothole.
20-30 years ago, Illinois easily. Living much of later childhood just across the border in Wisconsin, almost all family vacations involved rumbling across some stretch of a major route in the state whether we were going west, south, or east.
I haven't been in the state for a very long time, but based on the ubiquity of it in this thread, it appears that its reputation is well preserved.
Have IDOT's maintenance failures directly resulted in any deaths?
Quote from: paulthemapguyI forgot to mention! Vermont's roads are in dismal condition, and are often underbuilt.
In Vermont's defense, we're a wet winter climate with a light population. That said, I'd argue Maine, Illinois, and Michigan are worse.
But I'd also say that, without some sort of concrete baseline (pun intended) to gauge every state off of, the OP's question is very (too much IMO) subjective.
Quote from Scott 5114:
QuoteOklahoma puts chip seal on 65-mph divided highways and whenever it patches potholes, the patch sits around six inches above the rest of the road so it's almost as bad as if they didn't patch it at all. The paint used on roads appears to be as durable as sidewalk chalk, and in the rain there may as well be no markings at all.
Our bridges have killed out-of-state motorists by dropping chunks of concrete onto an active Interstate. When a similar tendency was detected on another bridge, the fix was apparently to wrap the bridge in plastic sheeting to catch the falling chunks, and it remained that way for several years until the bridge was replaced.
Do I win?
Back in the early 2000's, we had several bridges that were getting huge holes in the decks. One was so bad it was dropping concrete on people's windshields and had to be repaired at least weekly.
Texas also uses that loud obnoxious chip seal.
At least Texas has made a lot of progress since 2000 on replacing bridges and upgrading congested roadways
I have driven at least some in Indiana and Illinois (but not Oklahoma), and still assert that PennDOT out-does them both in terms of poorly-maintained highways (at least primary system highways that are generally maintained by the state DOT).
Now Pennsylvania, after decades of resistance, did just raise their motor fuel tax rates a lot - apparently most of the added money is going for bridge maintenance and repairs, given that the Keystone State has an abundant supply of structurally deficient highway bridges.
In my experience, Illinois, specifically those maintained by IDOT. Pennsylvania's are antiquated, but the pavement was decent. Indiana can use some work on their two-lanes, but their freeways are usually good. ISTHA is usually excellent, and the counties around here aren't too bad. Only the City of Chicago gives IDOT a run for the lack of maintenance. I shouldn't have to avoid potholes big enough to cause rim or axle damage on I-55 (as an example) while driving by them at 55-75 mph.
Louisiana :-/
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 14, 2017, 04:01:22 AM
Have IDOT's maintenance failures directly resulted in any deaths?
You win. :clap:
Quote from: froggie on April 14, 2017, 07:37:44 AM
Quote from: paulthemapguyI forgot to mention! Vermont's roads are in dismal condition, and are often underbuilt.
In Vermont's defense, we're a wet winter climate with a light population. That said, I'd argue Maine, Illinois, and Michigan are worse.
Then Pennsylvania is
much worse.
Quote from: Brandon on April 14, 2017, 11:16:22 AM
Pennsylvania's are antiquated, but the pavement was decent.
The four worst freeway segments in Pennsylvania are I-70 (between I-79 and the Turnpike at New Stanton); I-70 (between Breezewood and the Maryland border); I-83 (all of it); and I-78 between the U.S. 22 split (Exit 51) and the end of PennDOT maintenance at Exit 75 (crossing the Delaware River, the road is maintained (to a much higher standard) by Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
"Western" I-70 has horrible design, but I concede the pavement was reasonably smooth. "Eastern" I-70 features bad design, and not exactly the smoothest pavement (and yes, PennDOT is working on correcting some of the design deficiencies for the western part).
I-83 is generally smooth but the design is mostly beyond terrible (a long section between York and the Turnpike was reconstructed in the 1990's but the terrible interchange designs were kept).
The section of I-78 has reasonably modern design, but the pavement is beyond terrible.
CP: I think what you're complaining about regarding PennDOT has more to do with design than with maintenance. I agree with Brandon...their pavement and basic maintenance tends to be okay. And I've been around A LOT of Pennsylvania.
Quote from: froggie on April 18, 2017, 07:21:15 AM
CP: I think what you're complaining about regarding PennDOT has more to do with design than with maintenance. I agree with Brandon...their pavement and basic maintenance tends to be okay. And I've been around A LOT of Pennsylvania.
Aside from my home state of Maryland and our neighbor to the south in Virginia, I have probably driven more in Penn's Woods than any other state. Pavement is often smooth (in spite of the terrible design), but then there are sections where the pavement is in awful condition, such as that section of I-78 I mentioned upthread. Parts of I-81 in Pennsylvania are also in pretty bad condition (though at least some other parts are being improved, such as around Ravine (Exit 104) in Schuylkill County - at least Pennsylvania's cattle chute work zones do result in a relatively smooth riding surface when the work is done).