How good are American roads?

This is a great analysis but it does focus exclusively on ‘roughness’, which is obviously important but isn’t the be-all-end-all of road quality.

One area I notice in particular that roads in the northeast US subjectively feel worse than Europe is in quality of road markings. Constant plow scraping and harsh salting seems to destroy markings.

I think it also shows up in the overall fit and finish of road infrastructure - edging and barriers, signage, lighting, maintenance of medians, how curbs and furniture contribute to junction legibility… and of course bridges.

One major reason is that European countries typically have national road agencies and consistent standards across the country (because, generally, smaller and less federal). US’s patchwork of federal, state and local road maintenance leads to vastly different budgets and department priorities across the network.

I generally agree but need to point out Germany is organised like the US regarding road construction. Only Autobahnen and Bundesstraßen are under federal authority, with states and municipalities divvying up the rest.

Same in Italy (and probably most other EU countries); there's (about 25.000km of) roads that are maintained by a state agency; others are managed by a region, a province or a city. There's also an entirely different agency that needs to take care of highways.

Just FYI, at least germanies rods are also a patchwork. E.g. there are the Autobahns, which are financed by the federal state. Than there are Bundesstraßen (Yellow markings, typically something like B56) which are also financed by the federal state.

Then there are Landstraßen, which are financed by the Bundesland (state, LXXX). Followed by Kreisstraßen, financed by the Gemeinde (county?`).

Finally there are Gemeindestraßen, financed by the city or town.

There are lots of norms and regulations on how to build these roads, so there is not that much variance except layout. E.g. a bike friendly city like Münster has a dfiferent layout than say Cologne.

While I agree on your additional criteria, I feel the roughness metric itself (at least as explained here) is not as informative as it could be: a generally smooth road surface with sudden discontinuities in level (e.g.potholes) seems qualitatively worse (and damaging) than would be a smoothly-varying one with the same roughness. Perhaps an alternative metric might be based on the maximum speed at which a typical car or truck could travel without experiencing vertical accelerations above a certain threshold? ('typical', here would be with regard to things like its mass, suspension travel and stiffness, and wheelbase.)

I think your last paragraph is the key one. AFAIK in the US a lot less is regulated on a federal level. Like in Oregon you'll rarely see reflectors on the lane markings whereas they are omnipresent in some other states.

But the regulations in Germany are largely federal, no?

The metric might already account for the scenario you bring up, since a road with potholes will be more 'rough' than a smoothly varying one based on my understanding of this metric.

The reflectivity of the road markings in North Carolina—where plows are rarely used—is terrible, to the point that they are almost invisible on a rainy night, even on freshly painted roads. It's the worst of anywhere I've lived or driven in the U.S.

Relatedly, recently my wife mentioned seeing a vehicle with large boxes on each side and wondering what they were. From her description, I tracked down that they are a fleet maintained by a small company that measures road marking reflectivity:

https://www.beckenterprises.com/services/

So who knows, maybe NC is finally doing something about the road markings here.

What are these lane markings you speak of? I must tell our local street department, they will be amazed to hear of it.

They might be (no idea), but if they are there's a significant amount of leeway allowed and visible between municipal roads in Bavaria and Brandenburg (richer vs. poorer states...)

Edit: no, at least part of them is state specific, e.g. Saxony road administration law: https://www.revosax.sachsen.de/vorschrift/4785-Saechsisches-...

Yeah the UK is pretty similar. Devolution means Scotland and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland have some autonomy, but the big important roads are controlled by national government (albeit not necessarily the UK government) and your residential street is handled by much more local government, in my case the city where I live.

Actually Scotland bizarrely happens to have a road most similar to what most US folks would consider normal - a motorway (a multi-lane highway) named M8 going straight into the centre of a large city (Glasgow) on concrete stilts. This is not how the rest of the UK does it, but it so happens the M8 was conceived in that window of time where it was considered a good idea, some parts of my city were made in that era and I'm glad I don't live in them.

The lack of reflectivity of lane markings in North Carolina made night driving in the rain on the multi-lane roads around Raleigh quite a demanding task.

You have a good point. I live in Michigan and recently traveled down to Austin, Texas. The roads didn't seem all that much better but all of the road markings really stuck out to me. Reflectors in all the lines separating lanes, soft bollards surrounding cross walks and parking areas, extra curbs built in for bike lanes. It makes things look a lot nicer but my first thought was, "could you imagine trying to plow around those bollards, or those reflectors would get ripped up on the first pass."

Probably Cat's Eye

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_eye_(road)

What an interesting niche business! I love that the Software section of their homepage appears to be a screenshot of WordPress template source code.

That’s a stock image when you search for “code” available on almost any stock image provider.

In NC it really depends on where you live. With some of them looking very nice. While others it looks like it has not been touched in 20 years. I personally think they just have a set timeframe to refresh things and they stick rigidly to that no matter how good or bad they are.

Austin didn't even have snow plows until 2022, the year after snowmageddon. If I remember correctly, they tried using road graders and sand. Even then, it's generally ice, not snow in central tx, even after removing snow in 2021 there isn't/wasn't much to do about all the ice.

Yes. There also is a version that's set into a groove so that snow plows don't scrape them off.

Oh interesting! I'm honestly surprised because roads always seemed so much more consistent to me in Germany.

Also, "Bepflanzung des Straßenkörpers" might be the most German thing I've read in ages ;)

I thought about that, but this is what I had in mind: take a section (say 100 M) of an undulating road, smooth it out, then put a ridge across it that restores its roughness to its initial value. My feeling is that the latter would be more of a problem (this opinion is colored by the fact that, in my neighborhood, road repair is creating bumps and ridges like this.)

It was meant to be a sarcastic comment. My town's lane markings are so bad they might as well not exist in most places. And when they do repaint them they seem to use the thinnest flat paint they can buy, at night in the rain they just disappear. I know heavy reflective lane marking paint exists because I've seen it elsewhere.

Interesting, they're not that far from me. I love these little niche industries that no one's heard of. I guess they have to travel a lot to get enough business though.

For what it’s worth I hate the roads and parking in Europe. Roads are narrow, intersections are chaotic and parking is a joke. I drove around Europe for around 3 months (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium etc.) and longed to drive back in the US again.

This feels like it's supposed to sound like a bad thing. I think it's awesome the cities you went to were designed for the people who actually live in those cities, not the people driving through.

I figured something like that it's just a little bit funny.

Ah, very cool, and great timing. I saw one the other day and was wondering what it was measuring (I assumed).

I guess it would depend on how big the ridge you add would have to be. I'm not at all an expert on this, but my thinking is that a ridge of size 2X would have an exponential effect on the travel of the suspension and resulting IRI value when compared to a ridge of size X. So a perfectly smooth road with a ridge of height 2X would have a higher IRI than the same road with 2 ridges of size X.

The wikipedia article has more details on how the measurements are done (there are multiple different ways/instruments used which can have different results) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_roughness_index

> The IRI is based on the concept of a 'golden car' whose suspension properties are known. The IRI is calculated by simulating the response of this 'golden car' to the road profile. In the simulation, the simulated vehicle speed is 80 km/h (49.7 mi/h). The properties of the 'golden car' were selected in earlier research[12] to provide high correlation with the ride response of a wide range of automobiles that might be instrumented to measure a slope statistic (m/km).

Yeah in Europe you want to head for the main train stations or Park and Rides if you're spending time in cities. They usually have large car parks and good public transport.

Outside of towns and cities the road networks in those countries are generally excellent. Especially in France and Italy with their toll roads.

If you're just going city to city, take the train.

I've driven extensively in Spain and to a lesser extent France, Italy and Germany and never found parking a "joke" except in cities or with a huge car. Of course, due to density, the free parking places are usually very busy and hectic. But there's always an option to pay/pay more

Probably comes down to what you are used to. I find driving in the US stressful mostly because of other drivers not behaving like I’m used to.

I've driven NC from the mountains to the sea and haven't seen good reflective markings anywhere. Certainly all the road markings in and around Wake county are awful. Even at their best the markings don't compare to say Florida roads.

I think part of the problem is that NC counties don't maintain their own roads:

"North Carolina has the second largest state maintained highway network in the United States because all roads in North Carolina are maintained by either municipalities or the state."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Highway_System

I think NCDOT just doesn't use reflective paint. Maybe it's more expensive. I see folks complain about it frequently.

https://old.reddit.com/r/asheville/comments/18ro7lx/why_does...

https://old.reddit.com/r/raleigh/comments/12ehtj6/rain_and_r...

A video of 3M reflective paint that is designed to work in both wet and dry conditions (skip to 6:40):

https://youtu.be/4iY8JqHN-kI?t=400

A related issue you may have noticed is the large amount of trash on our roadsides. This is again because roadside trash pickup is maintained by the state and the budget for roadside cleanup has been de/underfunded since 2008.

Oh man, you want to see what a difference lane markings make? Take a drive on a rainy night to Grants Pass Oregon from Crescent City CA on hwy 199. In CA the lanes light up like a Christmas tree. The moment you cross into OR the lane lines basically disappear and you are mostly driving blind hoping the oncoming traffic doesn't stray across a center line neither of you can see.

It's remarkable that a state where the rainiest months of the year coincide with some of longest winter nights in the lower 48 states uses such horrible road paints.

Northern Europe gets more than enough snow and bollards and reflectors are a thing all the same. It's not a problem if you plan for it ahead of time and design and build things with that in mind.

To me, snowmageddon will always be Atlanta 2014.

Perhaps the best roads are those that see the least vehicular traffic.

Well then there's the overall experience using the roads, regardless of roughness. For example, Texas' under interstate turnarounds are super weird and make running a local errand feel like a cross country trip as an example. Areas without zoning laws between commercial / residential feel more stressful to me as a driver personally too.

If you find those roads narrow, don't try the UK or (especially) Ireland.

I've driven in France, Iberia, and Central/near Eastern Europe (Stuttgart to Budapest, Krakow, and back). City streets can be small, but the highways are highways. Even smaller roads in Slovakia weren't bad. Honestly didn't seem that different from driving in the US except that obedience to speed limits was a lot higher (though their limits are generally higher, so there's no real need to speed - 130 km/h is just over 80 mph, which is usually as fast as I would want to drive anyway).

> focus exclusively on ‘roughness’

also, as a road cyclist I've found that there are different types of paved roads, some are very smooth (asphalt I presume), and others are less so (concrete?). Both are paved, but one is much more pleasant to ride on than the other. I don't know if there is a relationship between roughness and durability or quality, or those are just different techniques.

>Yeah in Europe you want to head for the main train stations or Park and Rides if you're spending time in cities. They usually have large car parks and good public transport.

I live in Europe. I have travelled in Europe immensely over the last 15 years. I would NEVER recommend anybody this strategy, ESPECIALLY if they're coming from outside the EU.