Why U.S. Roads And Highways Are So Bad

the open road is said to be an especially American fascination for many it symbolizes freedom Commerce and adventure cars and highways have been at the center of American culture and pop culture and have played an essential role in US history but many Americans seem to have a pretty low opinion of the roads they actually drive on take a 20-18 poll from Monmouth University which found that almost a quarter of Americans say their local roads and bridges are in poor condition and another 41 percent say their roads and bridges are merely in fair condition as opposed to good or excellent more than 30 percent say there are roads in their areas in need of urgent repair I think it's important for most Americans to realize that our road system is stretched thin in this country Americans traveled three point two trillion miles last year on our roads and that's a 12 billion mile increase from just a year before and if you look back twenty years that's a six hundred and twelve billion mile increase so people like to travel which puts a strain on our roads so is it fair to say that US roads are in bad shape well some say yes and some say maybe not it's fair it's fair it is it is the roads the surface transportation system of the United States needs some serious attention right now you know we do this infrastructure report card every four years so in 2017 we graded the roads of the United States a critical part of the infrastructure which most people feel every day that was a grade of D the American Society of Civil Engineers research is widely cited but it should be noted the group represents people who do the work of building and fixing roads and bridges however other evidence indicates the country is falling behind on road construction and repair the most current data on pavement quality from 2018 indicates that 20% of the nation's major roads and highways essentially everything other than local and neighborhood roads have pavements in poor condition while 32 percent of urban roads have pavements in bad shape according to trip what we hear from transportation agencies is that's the roughness that's the the smoothness of the pavements that's what matters to us as consumers as public driving on the road but what they see happening at the same time is the subgrade the surface is underneath the roads are actually deteriorating faster than they can get through them and so the challenge is they want to maintain the pavement smoothness so the public can see that the pavements are being maintained in relatively good condition but what keeps them up at night is they know they're not doing the long term work to keep major roads and major highways in good condition in the long term bear in mind that urban roads carry about 70% of the nation's traffic those numbers have remained relatively stable since 2014 a US Department of Transportation report given to Congress in November 2019 indicated that as of 2014 the nation faced a 435 billion dollar backlog in needed road and highway repairs the same report found that to improve overall pavement conditions the US would need to increase annual investment in road repair by 29% from about 51 billion dollars annually to about 66 billion dollars and you at the same time traffic on roads is increasing vehicle travel rose 8 percent from 2013 to 2018 according to trip improving US infrastructure tends to be a popular political issue in the United States and tends to attract bipartisan support the impact of rough roads is that it's causing the public more money when roads are rough condition is speeding up your vehicle vehicles gonna wear out that much more quickly they need more routine maintenance and also they're using work more gasoline trip estimates that the average cost for American motorist is 603 dollars annually driving on rough roads and that total 130 billion dollars of additional operating cost that falls on the consumers with President Donald Trump made improving u.s. infrastructure a key issue in his campaign but Democratic politicians have also called for more investment in roads bridges highways and other bits of infrastructure there is a lot of nuance to this story I just have tried to urge people to be careful you know when they say the American infrastructure is crumbling you know and then universally poorly maintained I think that's a simplistic statement and I think it's a bit over roads across the u.s. can be pretty bad even terrible depending on a variety of factors the roads highways and bridges spanning the country are funded owned and maintained by a complex cluster of different government agencies at the local state and federal levels the federal government doesn't actually own most of the roads in America save a small percentage mostly on or around federal properties such as national parks most of the country's highways and roads including the so-called national highway system are owned and maintained by States or municipal governments 75% of roads in the u.s. are maintained by local governments and another 19 percent are maintained by the States according to Trip however the roads state governments maintain are often the most heavily traveled and include the interstate highway system the federal government through the Highway Trust Fund provides a considerable portion of the money to build and maintain the highways in the national system 46 billion dollars in 2019 that money is funded solely by the federal gas tax which drivers pay every time they pump fuel by the way the government has not raised the gas tax since 1993 more on that later the federal highway administration gives money from the trust fund to the states to build and fix highways that meet criteria set by the federal government states also charge their own gas taxes on top of the federal tax which they can use to repair roads according to their own guidelines then cities metropolitan areas or other local governments fund the repair and construction of their roads typically through property taxes or other sources of revenue what this means is that someone can be driving on a well-maintained highway onto a road that seems riddled with potholes or is an otherwise poor quality that is because those two roads even though they are connected to each other are funded through two totally different systems some who study the issues say the large-scale roads that make up the national highway system are actually improving in quality it's the local roads that tend to be struggling what this means is there can be a huge difference in quality from one road to another poorer areas for example often don't have the tax money needed to repair their roads but wealthier areas with a large number of roads can have difficulty making repairs as needed as well some parts of the country have a harder time maintaining roads simply because they have harsher climates which puts more stress on pavement the states that have the worst quality roads are all over the country and include Hawaii according to Trip and based on Federal Highway Administration data most of these roads are likely to be maintained by local governments trips researcher rocky Moretti told CNBC it is worth noting that four out of those ten states are in the Northeast where the climate tends to be harsh in contrast several of the states with the fewest problems on their roads are in the southern part of the country one of the biggest issues facing surface transportation at whatever level of government seems to be a lack of steady funding some groups such as the Automobile Association of America that are known as triple-a favor raising the federal gas tax which hasn't been touched since the 1990s the Government Accountability Office says that the 18 point 4 cent per gallon tax on gasoline enacted in 1993 is worth about 11 cents today due to inflation the other problem is that cars on the road are becoming more fuel-efficient which is pushing down the amount of gas customers need to buy people who drive electric cars aren't contributing to the highway fund at all since they are not buying gas the more common hybrid electrics and other fuel-efficient vehicles become the less money there will be going to repair the roads through the gas tax in recent years the Highway Trust Fund has relied increasingly on general tax revenue to cover its budgets rather than money from the gas tax Congress transferred a total of about 141 billion dollars in general revenues on eight separate occasions to the Highway Trust Fund from 2008 through 2015 according to the GAO funding problems are expected to continue in March 2016 the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 107 billion dollars in additional money would be required to maintain current levels of spending plus inflation from 2021 through 2026 notes the GAO with all these changes taking place some argue in favor of other ways to fund the national highway system including developing a new system that would charge drivers per mile driven rather than charging attacks for fuel in the meantime some states are taking their own steps to compensate for the declines in federal funding what we've seen since 2013 is approximately half the states have put in place significant long-term increases in user fees and that that's just been a recognition that the money wasn't coming from Washington or at least it had up until now local governments were already under a lot of stress trying to raise their funding sources and so state governments and pet have shown a lot more willingness over the last several years to step forward but now what we're starting to see particularly at the state level is a recognition into the long-term future that ultimately at least the motor fuel tax which has been a critical source is going to have a hard time making up with the changes in technology states such as Virginia are charging state taxes to raise more money while states such as Texas are experimenting with something called managed lanes where private companies install special toll lanes on roads to allow drivers to bypass traffic jams by paying a toll in a patchwork system expect patchwork solutions

Channel: CNBC

Views: 1,430,427

Keywords: CNBC, business, news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, Stock market news, stocks, why the u.s. has no high-speed rail, top gear, motortrend channel, chrisfix, doug demuro, carwow, scotty kilmer

Id: ixL3mDejAYU

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Nah_Fam_You_Smell]

Well no wonder out roads are bad... They are grated good, tbh I prefer grated cheese

[u/demonhellcat]

Pretty much every state that gets regular ice/snow is automatically at a disadvantage in this study.

[u/CaptainTurdfinger]

Drive anywhere that gets snow on a regular basis and you'll appreciate Georgia's roads a whole lot more.

[u/[deleted]]

I feel bad for the other states if this is true. Our roads are shit, 285 south of 20 is a death field. About turned my truck sideways.

[u/hendsero]

Roads outside of interstates and some state highways really depend on the county you’re in. Forsyth County has invested a lot recently into resurfacing all of the major roads in the county and it shows. Crossing into Cherokee County on Highway 20 is like driving into a third world country.

Alabama, comparatively, has terrible side roads but solid highways and interstates. I-20 & 459 from the GA to MS border is better than any Georgia interstate, in my opinion.

[u/flashfc]

In the CNBC video, Georgia roads are in the bottom 2% nationwide for roads who are considered bad. Now, I haven't travel to all Georgia but I do think there could be an improvement. I have drove through other states that roads do make me go mad

[u/ombloshio]

I mean. 16 isn’t that bad of a road, the scenery is just awful. 75 from top to bottom is actually pretty great (again, scenery is lacking for the majority); 95 is kinda loud, but solid; 85 gets rough south of Newnan, but it’s not bad; 285 is fucking scary except between 85 and 75.

Then there’s 400... we don’t talk about 400 south of Roswell.

But the backroads are, overall (from my experience), pretty unassuming. 301, 20, 23, 80, they’re actually not bad.