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How good are American roads?

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193 points chmaynard | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.452s | source
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O5vYtytb ◴[20 Nov 24 15:29 UTC] No.42194731[source]▶
Amazing that Minneapolis tops the city road quality chart, despite having the harshest winters. Do southern cities not build their roads so robustly? Or are they not maintained?
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gorfian_robot ◴[20 Nov 24 15:44 UTC] No.42194921[source]▶
the south is generally a poor region with terrible public sand social services
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O5vYtytb ◴[20 Nov 24 15:55 UTC] No.42195069[source]▶
3 of the bottom 4 cities are in California.
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dmoy ◴[20 Nov 24 16:15 UTC] No.42195355[source]▶
I mean, yea? CA has the highest real poverty rate (SPM) in the whole country.

Some of that won't translate as well to road quality due to the fixed cost portion of road repair (because the OPM rate isn't the highest (though still quite high)), but some of it will due to the not fixed cost portion (labor, etc).

But it definitely affects prioritization. People won't care as much about road quality relative to other things.

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1. firesteelrain ◴[20 Nov 24 16:57 UTC] No.42195872[source]▶
This does not make a great argument for California. It appears as a failed state compared to others.
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2. dmoy ◴[21 Nov 24 00:28 UTC] No.42199715[source]▶
But it may explain road quality, which makes sense to me. MN has some of the lowest poverty rates and is on the opposite end of the scale there