With road warriors in mind, we compared the fifty U.S. states to seek out the 15 states with the best roads in America.
People and products are transported on U.S. roads across a distance of 3.2 trillion miles – or over three hundred spherical journeys between the Earth and Pluto. It is a fact that Americans are driving a lot and vehicle miles traveled hit a record high in 2017. With the extra additional traffic on the roads, it’s no surprise that America’s congestion drawback is stagnating, and adding a few extra lanes or new roads definitely won’t solve the problem. The estimations are that 2 out of each 5 miles of the nation’s urban interstates are engorged. Moreover, in 2014, Americans spent 6.9 billion hours delayed in traffic – 42 hours per driver. However, America is spending more money to create, maintain, and improve the roads, and it’s paying off – give or take some stretches of pavement and a couple of bridge spans. Moreover, Trump’s administration has recently passed a $1 trillion infrastructure set up which will definitely improve the road quality. So, there are some states known as the best when it comes to their transportation system. But according to our research, the cities with best infrastructure in US are not always in the states with best infrastructure. Nevertheless, one thing is for sure – the cities with best highways are more developed than other cities. After all, throughout history, transportation had a key role when it comes to the American economy, deciding where and when growth happens.
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While researching about American roads, we noticed that people around the world are also concerned about roads in their countries. If you live in India, for example, and you are wondering which state has the best roads, then check out the State of States report. Moreover, to learn more about best roads in the world, do check our list of countries with the best roads in the world in 2018. In these countries, rural interstates are definitely shaping up. However, their urban counterparts are becoming worse. Apparently, the traffic congestion is something that we will have to learn to live with.
However, these trends are quite offset by excellent news regarding fatalities. According to the US news, from 2006 to 2008 more than 35000 Americans died in accidents which is more than double the number of homicides. While researching about American roads as well as drivers, we came across newest information on traffic congestion, road and bridge condition, as well as road safety. So we included all that in our examination of the state of U.S. states when it comes to road infrastructure.
In order to create our list of the states with the best roads in America, we decided to use U.S.News’ best states for transportation ranking, CNBC’s article on US states with the best infrastructure in America, as well as WalletHub‘s report on best and worst states for summer roads trips. We ranked the states by their infrastructure score, deficient bridges and average commute to work time.
Now, let’s see which are the 15 states with the best roads in America.
15. Kentucky
In Kentucky, traffic congestions are a rarity, since the roads are well-maintained. Don’t let their bluegrass fool you because they could make some improvements on their bridges.
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