These States Have the Worst Roads

The District of Columbia and California have the worst-condition roads while Oklahoma and Idaho have the best, a new survey finds. US News & World Repot

By Trevor Bach December 4, 2020 WASHINGTON, D.C., HAS an infrastructure problem. The 68-square-mile federal district has the worst road quality in the nation, according to a new report. [ READ: Southern States Have Best Road Infrastructure ] In the report from website MoneyGeek, the District of Columbia's highways earn an abysmal average roughness index score of 214. Yet the nation's capital also pays $107 in maintenance costs per lane mile of its highways ‒ by far the highest cost per lane mile paid by any state. Only 2% of D.C.'s major roadways rank in good condition, the report found. MoneyGeek analyzed spending data from sources including the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Congressional Budget Office; the website also created its own composite roughness score for each state. The International Roughness Index, a standard metric used to determine highway pavement quality, measures how much a passenger vehicle body moves vertically ‒ the result of bumps from uneven roads ‒ throughout one mile of driving. A score of below 95 inches/mile is considered good condition in the index, while above 170 is considered poor.

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