California Ranked At Bottom For American Road Quality

Written by Chriss W. Street

Munley truck accident attorneys published a new study based on data collected over the last decade by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for “acceptable” quality roads that found California consistently ranks as one of the Worst Five U.S. States for road quality.

Californians on average drive around 12,524 miles per year. That is more miles than any other state, and more miles than any other nation. The State of California provides roughly 386,604 road miles, including 25 interstate highways and 318 state highways.

California in the 1950s through the 1970s spent 18% of all state revenues on roads and other infrastructure. But that spending dropped below 3% of the budget and has never recovered. As a result, the state’s crumbling road system inflicts havoc on tires, suspension systems, and can cause vibrations that loosen cosmetic components.

That road system is about to be tested with the National Weather Service projecting another atmospheric river will bring heavy snow to the Sierra Mountains, expect land and rock mudslidesbelow 8000 feet, and major flash flooding at lower elevations.

The most common measurement for road quality is the International Roughness Index (IRI) that measures how much a car moves vertically as it travels over a given distance. The measurement is typically given in units like “inches per mile” or “millimeters per meter.” Lower IRI is better: the rougher the road, the more the car bounces up and down, and the higher the IRI. A “good” IRI is generally in the neighborhood of 95 inches per mile, or 1.5 millimeters per meter or less.

Data on national, state, and city level road quality is provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that ranks three-levels of categorizationare ranked from “very good” to “very poor.”

California federal interstate roads are ranked fairly good for quality, with more than 80% of mileage ranked good to very-good, and only around 3% ranked poor to very-poor. But with only 60% of California roads ranked in good quality, the state is one of only five states with an overall quality rating scores in the 50s.

Generally urban roads tend to be worse in quality than rural roads in all cases because they tend to see higher traffic than rural roads. More than a third of California non-interstate urban roads are poor quality or worse. California is relatively rural, yet comes in third from the bottom in road quality.

Cold places tend to have lower road quality in general due to freeze-thaw cycles. But many cold northern border states likeNorth Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota have good-quality roads, while warm states like Louisiana, New Mexico, California have poor-quality roads. The same is true for cities with Minneapolis and New York near the top of quality, while warm cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Dallas are at the bottom.

Most roads in the US are built to last 20 years by using one or more layers of asphalt concrete (a mixture of aggregate and bitumen as a binder) over a layer of coarse aggregate like gravel.

Concrete pavement currently costs about 20% more to installthan asphalt, but is more cost efficient because it requires less maintenance provides up to 30-year life.

Concrete is also expected to become more popular in the future as roads play a more integrated role in vehicle connectivity by embedding transmitters into pavement that will allow wireless internet connection and provide realtime information on traffic, accidents and road conditions.

Silicon Valley companies are developing road sensors that will augment law enforcement and safety needs by recording weights and velocity of every vehicle on the road. Technology is also in test phase to enable continual charging of electric vehicle batteries by placing metal slot tracks into roadway.