Interesting list, but I'm not sure that their criteria - which emphasizes decrepit bridges among other things- match the specific experiences of cyclists. I'm sure there's a correlation, but there are lots of roads around here that are more or less acceptable for driving and hell on bicycle wheels.

What I observed on my XC trip was that the main arteries generally are in very good condition. However when you go through smaller sized cities and towns it was obvious their revenues were being used for something other than road maintenance. The larger sized cities roads were very good as well. I rode a lot of rural roads in Indiana and Ohio and those were pretty good as well.

Locally it seems all the roads have been or are getting resurfaced. Of course we have one of the highest fuel taxes around so at least the dollars are going to some improvements.

I think the UK beats you there by some considerable margin . . . . We actually call it Road Tax!!

Here a couple of the main roads on my routes have been repaved so things have improved a bit. One was nice for a couple months, then they came through and rolled a rumble strip into the shoulder, so you have to take the lane which makes it not quite so nice. It has a long downhill where I average 30-40 mph spinning easily in the 50X12 or 11. Before I had to watch the road like a hawk for potholes (though I ride this route weekly so pretty much knew what line I had to take). The county and state argue over who is responsible for some roads, result is nobody does any maintenance on them. Our current mayor has made it a priority to do more repaving; my entire suburb was repaved over the last two years.

scott s.
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I'm retired military and have lived in several states and commuted in all of them. All roads are basically the same and in general they are adequate for cycling. However, there are two exceptions that stick out in my experience and two states I don't want to cycle in again. South Carolina and Hawaii.

I noticed that where rumble strips were installed recently for whatever reason they put them in the middle of shoulder......that left about 12-18" of space to ride on. If they had just put them next to the white line there would have been 2-3' of good shoulder. I'd really be curious to know why in the world they moved them over so far in the shoulder. It sure created a more unsafe situation for anyone wanting to cycle on those roads.

We ride into SC from NC on some of our routes. I agree there is a noticeable difference in the paved surfaces. For whatever reason there are a lot more potholes and broken pavement in SC on rural roads. It didn't used to be that way. For a long time SC's gas tax was a lot lower than NC's, but it seems to have closed the gap over the past year. We used to dip down into SC just to buy gas but not anymore. Maybe SC has realized they are in dire need of road improvements???

Not here. Our county commissioner has been in office for 18 years and the roads are horrible.

They don't seem to do much construction on I-10.

I forgot to mention one area where the roads are in really bad shape and it's my hometown of Maryland, in the vicinity of Washington D.C., including Virginia (in the area of D.C.)

I forgot it because I don't do much riding there, since I got into cycling after joining the military; however, the few times I did ride on those roads (when visiting) I absolutely hated it. There are so many freakin' pot holes and cracks in the roads and even on many of the bike paths.

Alexandria is a very nice city, but even it has some really bad roads, you can see a small example here on this video, which reminded me of this thread and the roads I've ridden on... Is This Driver Using a Bike Path to Skip Rush Hour, Or Is He Just Lost? | Bicycling

P.S. This area also has some of the worst motorists I've had to cycle around...



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It's a mixed bag here in my neck of the woods. Some roads have recently been resurfaced and are a joy to ride on while others haven't seen any serious work since only God knows when and would challenge the shocks of the best car, let alone bicycles. Those I have learned to avoid as I don't want to feel like a severely shaken martini.

Pretty much the same with area MUPs. A popular one was just resurfaced this spring and is very nice for riding while sections of another MUP look like the surface of the moon. There are plans to resurface it next year. I sure hope they do.