How good are American roads?

> Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than rural roads.

There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with dissimilar materials, and leave.

That’s part of the reason. The other is that rural roads are mostly county or state funded (often through large Federal appropriations), and draw in a larger tax base and in-house professional engineering.

That’s why you can drive around rust belt areas of Upstate NY on nice roads - NYC Finance bonuses pay for that.

City roads are usually maintained by the city, which has much more limited access to capital. Because of that, in-house work is usually limited to mill and pave work and there’s not enough throughput for an appropriate staff of engineers. Big projects are usually task focus (safety, multi-modal) and are funded by Federal grants and use outside design and build contractors.

For the shared utility work, there is some coordination. My wife worked for a municipal water utility and ran the metering and infrastructure division. They received notice of paving or other jobs and prioritized proactive maintenance to happen while the road was under construction. The city would fine entities for digging up the street for non-emergency purposes for 6-12 months after the project completed. It helps, but broken mains or transformers necessitate the street cut.

This trope that rich cities pay for everything needs to be taken out and shot. Yes, there is a cash flow there but it's nickels or dimes on the dollar, not a huge amount compared to variances in budget and expenditures. Buffalo would not turn into Mogadishu without NYC paying for the privilege of ordering it around by proxy of Albany.