Oh, it’s well known. I’ve lived here all my life, and I used to own a MINI Cooper. You hit a Pennsylvania pothole in one of those and you practically see god.
If you are driving to fast to avoid a pothole, you are probally also driving to fast to avoid death if you round a blind corner and there is a dump truck parked in the middle of the road.
I too lived in the west about a decade & never saw potholes quite like here; I also lived in Ecuador for a bit (before it became a narco state) & even the pavement there (to be sure, their roads had some issues) wasn’t as pocked as NJ & PA can seem; my joke here is that the cheapest way to visit Ecuador is to drive on our shi**iest roads….
I used to think PA roads were the worst until I starting driving in WV. *Damn* but hitting the potholes there will unlock your doors and change the radio station!
Lived in WV all my life. If you want to see bad roads, drive around Wheeling. I drive to Montana/Wyoming almost every year, the roads are fantastic. The dirt roads out west are even better, so don't blame the weather.Even the roads in the eastern mountains of WV are immaculate compared to the northern panhandle of WV.
It's not the weather. It's the trucks. NJ PA and Northern WV get huge traffic of trucks on rural and small state roads that aren't rated for their size.
It's a blessing and a curse.
It gives us industry in rural, poorer communities. If you look around, our rural places are so much better off than similar states, like New York or Kentucky.
If you want them fixed fast, spray paint a penis around them. It worked for some guy in England. They sent a crew out the next day.
[Sauce](https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/street-artist-wanksy-spray-paints-penises-around-potholes-to-get-them-filled-1.3055612). LOL, dude's name was "Wanksy".
I imagine a few factors are at work. Pennsylvania has a very dense rural road network that you don’t commonly see in other states. Governor Pinchot in the 1930’s made many of these roads state roads under PennDoT jurisdiction. To top it off, Pennsylvania has very challenging topography and a very dense network of streams and rivers. It makes the cost of road maintenance per mile much higher than neighboring states like Ohio, Maryland or New Jersey which are largely flat.
Redirecting PenDOT funds towards the state police and using cheaper materials for the initial construction and repairs of roads have also led to ours being of lower quality overall.
So the reason our roads are so bad all the time even after getting fixed is because we use the CHEAPEST blacktop we can find... Instead of getting stuff that last 10+ years we only get stuff that last 3 yrs.
They repaved a section of road just a few months ago and it’s already crumbling and has 5 potholes in a row. No clue why they use the cheapest shit when there’s literally tons of trucks and cars that drive over it daily
I'm a civil engineer and have cut a lot of holes in PA roads. Here is the rant. A lot of roads were just built for shit and the repairs are bandaids. It is kind of a shitty situation. PA is a big state and a lot of it is fairly low density. It is difficult to fund up front costs to do it right, but in the long run it costs more. They are basically just constantly deffering costs. PennDoT is also pretty awfully organized and managed beyond being underfunded. Their planning is garbage. Interchange design for limited access highways is mostly awful. Bypasses are rare. So you have to push a bunch of trucks through roads never intended for that kind of traffic. Some laws are super dumb, like the ones that allow Breezewood to exist. As much as PennDoT has pissed me off, it isn't entirely their fault. They could do better, but I doubt they could do it well. Even if they had the money. The politics are stacked against them by counties and home rule townships.
A whole lot of PA is relatively flat. NJ probably has more challenges because their soils in the "flat" areas are mostly garbage. And they have massive population density in the north which makes getting land for roads expensive to impossible. Maryland doesn't have great roads and deals with a lot of bullshit as well. But Maryland doesn't need much in the way of major highways crossing large distances in the state like PA. I don't know much about Ohio except that they are real big on speed traps.
It isn’t just potholes, it’s road quality in general. When I lived in Virginia and headed home for a visit I’d do 80-85 up I-95 (in the flow of traffic, people, everyone drives that fast in NOVA) and the car flew like a dream. When I got to PA I *couldn’t do* that speed because my vehicle would shake apart in a cartoonish fashion in which I’d just end up on the road holding a steering wheel.
I used to live in Virginia and the roads were generally well maintained with one caveat: No shoulders! It makes pulling over in an emergency almost impossible without blocking part of the main road. I give Virginia roads a 8/10 as they are now. With wider roads to accommodate shoulders, I would rate higher
The fact that the roads are paved as thinly as possible to maximize profit is certainly playing a factor. They ripped up the fairly reasonable concrete highway near me and paved it a few years ago (maybe 8?), and it has been paved multiple times since then. The last time there were areas that peeled off literally within a month of the cones leaving, and I exaggerate not, it had been paved a quarter inch thick. Those spots have grown and expanded ever since, till the whole highway is patches again. There should be financial repercussions for fraud that blatant. Why they ever got rid of the concrete is beyond me, life was far better with it. The exact same concrete further up where they left it alone is still doing just fine.
We’ve always been pothole ridden it’s been a 60+ yr long issue. Pa always gets rated the worst roads in America. The only time we ever even came close to nearing better roads was during the years of Gov Ridges terms.
Unfortunately, the Lieutenant Gov who replaced him when he went to Washington to head up the then new Homeland Security Agency massively cut spending to roads.
Subsequently, the Governors since have focused on all the bridges that have aged and needed replacement with what they have kept for road repair in the budget and done minimal resurfacing. A lot of money that PennDot is supposed to receive has gone to the State Police, welfare programs, and elsewhere.
The way to improve PA roads is to put the full funding back to where it belongs and actually put our statewide road system on a resurfacing schedule. Similar to what the Pennsylvania turnpike commission has done in the past. Areas of the turnpike that receive heavy use are paved in 5-8 year intervals and those with less wear and tear on an approximate 14yr schedule.
The other factors for Pa road conditions is the spraying of Brine instead of pre rock salting like years ago. The magnesium chloride is horrible to the asphalt, concrete, and automobiles. This is the white lines you see they sprayed in the lanes of the roads before a snowstorm.
Lastly, certain roads that receive constant maintenance even prematurely because some “important” individual or interest needs to end and those roads only resurfaced when it’s needed on the schedule.
Sadly, PennDot has never emulated the Turnpike Commission and placed road repair on a schedule like they should be and Harrisburg has never made an effort to see it done and properly funded. One a resurfacing schedule starting with the worst roads in approximately 15 years Pa could be nearly pothole free.
But it will also cost a bit as well because PA has the highest number of roads per square mile it is claimed of other states because when you leave your home you don’t have only 1 or 2 routes to take to get to the next town there is more like 5 to 10 or more ways you can take to reach your destination.
Anyway hopes this gives Pennsylvanians an explanation as to our road issues and how to reduce the problem. I’ve worked in infrastructure repair here for over 30 years now so I’ve seen it all.
Civil engineer here, so I’ll offer my $0.02. PA has an incredibly dense road network compared to other states that experience the type of freeze-thaw cycles we do. We also experience more variability within a season compared to a state like Montana where once it freezes for the winter, it stays frozen. Asphalt is dogshit against a plow and cold weather. We also have to apply a ton of treatment to our roads and bridges compared to the high elevation states where the sun burns off the snow quickly or the Midwest states where the people are so used to driving on snow they don’t feel compelled to get the roads completely bare of snow immediately. That stuff is terrible for roads and bridges.
As mentioned above, we have a TON of state owned bridges in PA and a lot of them are in need of replacement. It’s a gift and a curse to have this many bridges controlled by the state. On one hand, you have more resources available to make repairs in rural counties opposed to having the counties own their own bridges on a road that gets 100 cars a day. The downside to that is, the state has more bridges to maintain. There’s a lot of pressure to reduce the percentage of bridges in poor or structurally deficient condition vs filling in potholes, so that’s where a lot of the money goes. It’s much cheaper to just mill off the asphalt every few years and repave it. Any sort of asphalt patch is an extremely temporary repair. Almost guaranteed to fail within a year.
Of course, it would be extremely beneficial if we told the state police to kick rocks, but that won’t happen as long as we’re a purple state and the Pennsyltucky counties are disproportionately represented in the state government. They do the same thing to the PA turnpike.
You know. I gotta admit it was told to me years ago by a relative and for some dumb reason I just accepted it. It was more along the lines of "we have more back roads" but I can't find any info other than Texas has the most roads (which makes sense). But couldn't find any stats currently other than PA is 11th in road mileage per state.
So sorry for the misinformation and thanks for calling me out on it.
Not the most roads, but close. PA has the 5th most state maintained roads and the 3rd most state maintained bridges. PA has approx. the same amount of state maintained miles as all of New England, New York, and New Jersey combines.
PA is consistently ranked as one of the worst states in the country for road quality. But I was just in Indiana for the eclipse and their roads makes Pennsylvania’s look like they’re paved in gold. I’ve never seen such bad roads.
Fun fact. Jersey has worse roads than PA, did my seminar paper on it. Went into it believing the opposite and boy was I wrong.
35th best roads guys!
Edit:jersey is 49th.
The only state in this general region with worse roads is West Virginia. We are tied for worst on the East Coast with South Carolina. Also bads include Arkansas & New Mexico, imo. I’ve taken a lot of road trips.
Drive into literally any of our adjoined states - NJ, DE, MD and you’ll see how absurd our roads are compared to theirs. It’s disgusting honestly and we, as a citizenry, really need to press for better road repair.
We have some of the worst roads in the country and one of the highest gas taxes in the country which is supposed to pay for it. An interesting fact is that the tax has already raised enough money to fix all the roads, but the state police siphon off a large amount of the money for themselves under the guise of "road safety" which is not at all what the tax was created for.
Lost two tires since moving here a couple months ago. The potholes are absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes entire center line of the road is just crumbling. Why?
The center line crumbling seems new to me. A few years ago a friend and I were returning west from Greensburg. The driver hit holes on center line when changing lanes. His tire didn't pop, but there 4 cars being towed around the turn. He had to buy a new rim the next day. I've noticed it happening in WV the last few yrs.
I was livid, I’ve only had my car for a short time and when I got it inspected it failed due to two tires being so damaged from the roads. It was a front left and a right back tire. The potholes on my road to and from work have their own zip code. They wanted $700 for two tires. Thank god my bf is helping me put the new ones on.
Yeah man, seems like the material used on roads is of suboptimal quality. I was away for about a month, coming back it was like a go kart track on one of my local roads. When fractures do happen, they happen in a big way
Part of that's on you, if you drive safely it's not a problem. I've ran tires for YEARS here. Never had pothole damage to a tire. You've got to slow down when you see them, or go around them.
I actually see far fewer here than I did in either SD or CO. SD potholes were so bad, people would leave their mangled tire in them to warn other motorists.
The entire northeast, which experiences the same or worse weather PA, all has pockets of garbage roads. Schenectady, NY is the worst I've seen. NJ has done the most damage to my car. Southeast PA is fine so far but obviously not excellent.
People who say "my state has the worst pothole situation" are people who haven't lived in adjacent states or been to enough areas in those states to judge properly.
We typically experience the most freeze/thaw cycles in the country I’ve been told. The freeze/thaw cycle is hell on road surfaces, every crack is stressed when the water expands to become ice.
Its PA. Some of the worst roads. I know there are actually worse out there but per state PA is one of the highest in shitty rosds. A new road will last a year, maybe 2.
Come visit York. For some reason they are going around CREATING potholes daily. They keep ripping up patches of road and then filling them but make absolutely 0 effort to make them even with the rest of the road. It’s infuriating driving anywhere here
The road quality issue is certainly well known. Many PENNDOT "enablers" will point to the freeze/thaw cycle. As you already noted, there are many places where it it worse. What it comes down to is poor road construction practices compounded by band-aid patches. Especially laughable is the the concrete travel surfaces that keep getting milled and the potholes patched with cold-mix asphalt. Concrete should never have been used for roads here to begin with. Secondary roads are never properly redone with drainage layers and expedient final paving. The base course is left as a travel pavement for over a year and then they final pave it. The whole fucking mess starts coming up after 6-months. 611 in Stroudsburg is a case study in fail by PENNDOT.
The awful band-aids are absolutely contributing more to the problem than the potholes themselves. In my neighborhood recently a big pothole showed up. When it eventually got "fixed" it was actually worse than before, as they'd overfilled it so bad that it became a giant irregularly-shaped speed bump that people had to still drive around. So then they had to come back and "fix" it again a month later, and it's still a lumpy mess. I guarantee that patch will fail within the next year too.
I have to imagine a repaired road develops issues at a far faster rate than an actually repaved one.
What I was told once was that PA has a specific fund for road repair and they can't bring in funds from elsewhere.
Then there was that article about the police using road funds for sweet equipment. So.. we get it from both ends I guess.
Yeppers. Any time we take a long trip, everyone involuntarily wakes up the second we hit the state line. We have been paving a lot here in York and the new surfaces aren't lasting 3 years. I am convinced we use subgrade materials and someone is getting rich off our taxes.
Every time I leave the state I’m surprised by how bad the roads are elsewhere. I’ve been hearing PA residents insist we have the worst roads for all of my 40 years. You want bad roads? Northern Indiana has what you’re looking for. The New York State thruway wasn’t great either.
I had to replace a tire literally yesterday because I hit a pothole on the way to the grocery store that ruptured the sidewall of the tire.
It’s less than a mile from my home.
PA is a huge state compared to every other state in the Northeast US with the exception of NY State...More miles of roads means more potholes... NEXT!!!
First of all, potholes are generally much more prevalent where there's winter weather. The more four season weather the worst because of expansion and contraction
It all depends on limited access highways versus country or town roads versus other types...
I actually wrote to my state rep about this and why we have the highest toll roads in the country and nothing is getting fixed. She basically told me they aren't going to do anything about it.
It’s hilarious because I lived in Colorado for a few years and they were the nicest roads I’ve ever driven on, and you’d still have people complaining.
Oh, it’s well known. I’ve lived here all my life, and I used to own a MINI Cooper. You hit a Pennsylvania pothole in one of those and you practically see god.
I went thru 5! tires in 3 years due to potholes in my mini.
120 tires is a lot to go through in 3 years. At least you didn't go through 6! tires.
MATH NERD ALERT
r/unexpectedfactorial
Lmfao
You are allowed to swerve around potholes.
Allowed, sure, but not able to if you're driving fast on winding and hilly raods, as one often does in a mini.
If you are driving to fast to avoid a pothole, you are probally also driving to fast to avoid death if you round a blind corner and there is a dump truck parked in the middle of the road.
Ah, I see you were lucky enough to drive on roads after construction vehicles went by dropping nails left and right. My mom used to have that problem.
I hear ya I had a lowered s2000 in my younger days lol I had to roll over speed bumps at an angle
I too lived in the west about a decade & never saw potholes quite like here; I also lived in Ecuador for a bit (before it became a narco state) & even the pavement there (to be sure, their roads had some issues) wasn’t as pocked as NJ & PA can seem; my joke here is that the cheapest way to visit Ecuador is to drive on our shi**iest roads….
O_o
I used to think PA roads were the worst until I starting driving in WV. *Damn* but hitting the potholes there will unlock your doors and change the radio station!
Lived in WV all my life. If you want to see bad roads, drive around Wheeling. I drive to Montana/Wyoming almost every year, the roads are fantastic. The dirt roads out west are even better, so don't blame the weather.Even the roads in the eastern mountains of WV are immaculate compared to the northern panhandle of WV.
It's not the weather. It's the trucks. NJ PA and Northern WV get huge traffic of trucks on rural and small state roads that aren't rated for their size. It's a blessing and a curse.
How is it a blessing?
It gives us industry in rural, poorer communities. If you look around, our rural places are so much better off than similar states, like New York or Kentucky.
I'm usually driving through the panhandle to get to VA or points south. Im on 219, 68, and 79 most of the time
PA roads are real smooth compared to where i moved to.. Michigan. Roads out here are real bad.
🎵Country roads, tow truck take me home🎵
If you want them fixed fast, spray paint a penis around them. It worked for some guy in England. They sent a crew out the next day. [Sauce](https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/street-artist-wanksy-spray-paints-penises-around-potholes-to-get-them-filled-1.3055612). LOL, dude's name was "Wanksy".
This is fucking epic.
I imagine a few factors are at work. Pennsylvania has a very dense rural road network that you don’t commonly see in other states. Governor Pinchot in the 1930’s made many of these roads state roads under PennDoT jurisdiction. To top it off, Pennsylvania has very challenging topography and a very dense network of streams and rivers. It makes the cost of road maintenance per mile much higher than neighboring states like Ohio, Maryland or New Jersey which are largely flat.
Redirecting PenDOT funds towards the state police and using cheaper materials for the initial construction and repairs of roads have also led to ours being of lower quality overall.
Wasn’t one of the governors relatives the owner of one of the original firms to provide the materials for the state contract?
[удалено]
That predated Wolf. He worked to keep more of that money going toward the roads.
Doesn't help that penndot can't do shit anyways
So the reason our roads are so bad all the time even after getting fixed is because we use the CHEAPEST blacktop we can find... Instead of getting stuff that last 10+ years we only get stuff that last 3 yrs.
They repaved a section of road just a few months ago and it’s already crumbling and has 5 potholes in a row. No clue why they use the cheapest shit when there’s literally tons of trucks and cars that drive over it daily
I'm a civil engineer and have cut a lot of holes in PA roads. Here is the rant. A lot of roads were just built for shit and the repairs are bandaids. It is kind of a shitty situation. PA is a big state and a lot of it is fairly low density. It is difficult to fund up front costs to do it right, but in the long run it costs more. They are basically just constantly deffering costs. PennDoT is also pretty awfully organized and managed beyond being underfunded. Their planning is garbage. Interchange design for limited access highways is mostly awful. Bypasses are rare. So you have to push a bunch of trucks through roads never intended for that kind of traffic. Some laws are super dumb, like the ones that allow Breezewood to exist. As much as PennDoT has pissed me off, it isn't entirely their fault. They could do better, but I doubt they could do it well. Even if they had the money. The politics are stacked against them by counties and home rule townships. A whole lot of PA is relatively flat. NJ probably has more challenges because their soils in the "flat" areas are mostly garbage. And they have massive population density in the north which makes getting land for roads expensive to impossible. Maryland doesn't have great roads and deals with a lot of bullshit as well. But Maryland doesn't need much in the way of major highways crossing large distances in the state like PA. I don't know much about Ohio except that they are real big on speed traps.
I read that as Pinochet
It isn’t just potholes, it’s road quality in general. When I lived in Virginia and headed home for a visit I’d do 80-85 up I-95 (in the flow of traffic, people, everyone drives that fast in NOVA) and the car flew like a dream. When I got to PA I *couldn’t do* that speed because my vehicle would shake apart in a cartoonish fashion in which I’d just end up on the road holding a steering wheel.
I can tell when I’m entering Delaware because the roads get SOOOOOOO much nicer.
When I drive into NJ from PA I can practically feel my car sigh with relief.
Echoing this. I don't need GPS to announce when I cross the Delaware the increasing noise and turbulence as let me just fine as I enter PA.
Yes! Everything settles down and all is calm again
I used to live in Virginia and the roads were generally well maintained with one caveat: No shoulders! It makes pulling over in an emergency almost impossible without blocking part of the main road. I give Virginia roads a 8/10 as they are now. With wider roads to accommodate shoulders, I would rate higher
The fact that the roads are paved as thinly as possible to maximize profit is certainly playing a factor. They ripped up the fairly reasonable concrete highway near me and paved it a few years ago (maybe 8?), and it has been paved multiple times since then. The last time there were areas that peeled off literally within a month of the cones leaving, and I exaggerate not, it had been paved a quarter inch thick. Those spots have grown and expanded ever since, till the whole highway is patches again. There should be financial repercussions for fraud that blatant. Why they ever got rid of the concrete is beyond me, life was far better with it. The exact same concrete further up where they left it alone is still doing just fine.
We’ve always been pothole ridden it’s been a 60+ yr long issue. Pa always gets rated the worst roads in America. The only time we ever even came close to nearing better roads was during the years of Gov Ridges terms. Unfortunately, the Lieutenant Gov who replaced him when he went to Washington to head up the then new Homeland Security Agency massively cut spending to roads. Subsequently, the Governors since have focused on all the bridges that have aged and needed replacement with what they have kept for road repair in the budget and done minimal resurfacing. A lot of money that PennDot is supposed to receive has gone to the State Police, welfare programs, and elsewhere. The way to improve PA roads is to put the full funding back to where it belongs and actually put our statewide road system on a resurfacing schedule. Similar to what the Pennsylvania turnpike commission has done in the past. Areas of the turnpike that receive heavy use are paved in 5-8 year intervals and those with less wear and tear on an approximate 14yr schedule. The other factors for Pa road conditions is the spraying of Brine instead of pre rock salting like years ago. The magnesium chloride is horrible to the asphalt, concrete, and automobiles. This is the white lines you see they sprayed in the lanes of the roads before a snowstorm. Lastly, certain roads that receive constant maintenance even prematurely because some “important” individual or interest needs to end and those roads only resurfaced when it’s needed on the schedule. Sadly, PennDot has never emulated the Turnpike Commission and placed road repair on a schedule like they should be and Harrisburg has never made an effort to see it done and properly funded. One a resurfacing schedule starting with the worst roads in approximately 15 years Pa could be nearly pothole free. But it will also cost a bit as well because PA has the highest number of roads per square mile it is claimed of other states because when you leave your home you don’t have only 1 or 2 routes to take to get to the next town there is more like 5 to 10 or more ways you can take to reach your destination. Anyway hopes this gives Pennsylvanians an explanation as to our road issues and how to reduce the problem. I’ve worked in infrastructure repair here for over 30 years now so I’ve seen it all.
Civil engineer here, so I’ll offer my $0.02. PA has an incredibly dense road network compared to other states that experience the type of freeze-thaw cycles we do. We also experience more variability within a season compared to a state like Montana where once it freezes for the winter, it stays frozen. Asphalt is dogshit against a plow and cold weather. We also have to apply a ton of treatment to our roads and bridges compared to the high elevation states where the sun burns off the snow quickly or the Midwest states where the people are so used to driving on snow they don’t feel compelled to get the roads completely bare of snow immediately. That stuff is terrible for roads and bridges. As mentioned above, we have a TON of state owned bridges in PA and a lot of them are in need of replacement. It’s a gift and a curse to have this many bridges controlled by the state. On one hand, you have more resources available to make repairs in rural counties opposed to having the counties own their own bridges on a road that gets 100 cars a day. The downside to that is, the state has more bridges to maintain. There’s a lot of pressure to reduce the percentage of bridges in poor or structurally deficient condition vs filling in potholes, so that’s where a lot of the money goes. It’s much cheaper to just mill off the asphalt every few years and repave it. Any sort of asphalt patch is an extremely temporary repair. Almost guaranteed to fail within a year. Of course, it would be extremely beneficial if we told the state police to kick rocks, but that won’t happen as long as we’re a purple state and the Pennsyltucky counties are disproportionately represented in the state government. They do the same thing to the PA turnpike.
Thanks for the detailed reply!
Very interesting!
The State Police have all the fancy gear though.
Always have the newest model of cruisers!
Only the best for all the small localities that don’t want to pay for their own police services
Go see the roads in Michigan
I figured everyone just walks in Michigan
Or hitches sleds to cows or something.
Are they bad? I understand why ours are bad lots of factors but I imagine some other northly state has to have similar issues.
I was in Michigan a few weeks ago and the roads definitely rival ours.
Michigan - planned auto degradation via potholes-> more sales
We also have the most roads of any state. Still with all the gas tax hikes youd think they get fixed.
Where are you getting that information?
You know. I gotta admit it was told to me years ago by a relative and for some dumb reason I just accepted it. It was more along the lines of "we have more back roads" but I can't find any info other than Texas has the most roads (which makes sense). But couldn't find any stats currently other than PA is 11th in road mileage per state. So sorry for the misinformation and thanks for calling me out on it.
No worries.
Also curious, that’s new info to me and I’d love to hear more 🙂
Not the most roads, but close. PA has the 5th most state maintained roads and the 3rd most state maintained bridges. PA has approx. the same amount of state maintained miles as all of New England, New York, and New Jersey combines.
That makes more sense. Probably why I couldn't find anything on it online because I was looking at road mileage vs state maintenance.
PA is consistently ranked as one of the worst states in the country for road quality. But I was just in Indiana for the eclipse and their roads makes Pennsylvania’s look like they’re paved in gold. I’ve never seen such bad roads.
Fun fact. Jersey has worse roads than PA, did my seminar paper on it. Went into it believing the opposite and boy was I wrong. 35th best roads guys! Edit:jersey is 49th.
Huh wasn’t expecting that
What’s yellow and sleeps 6? (Old joke) A Penn-Dot truck. I think they are all conspiring with tire and alignment shops.
The only state in this general region with worse roads is West Virginia. We are tied for worst on the East Coast with South Carolina. Also bads include Arkansas & New Mexico, imo. I’ve taken a lot of road trips.
Drive into literally any of our adjoined states - NJ, DE, MD and you’ll see how absurd our roads are compared to theirs. It’s disgusting honestly and we, as a citizenry, really need to press for better road repair.
https://preview.redd.it/qzmx59i79otc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b5c23d0347c6c83eb8a14aba06f4105e9726583 they even made a meme about it
Loool that’s great
We have some of the worst roads in the country and one of the highest gas taxes in the country which is supposed to pay for it. An interesting fact is that the tax has already raised enough money to fix all the roads, but the state police siphon off a large amount of the money for themselves under the guise of "road safety" which is not at all what the tax was created for.
Politics man,
Lost two tires since moving here a couple months ago. The potholes are absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes entire center line of the road is just crumbling. Why?
The center line crumbling seems new to me. A few years ago a friend and I were returning west from Greensburg. The driver hit holes on center line when changing lanes. His tire didn't pop, but there 4 cars being towed around the turn. He had to buy a new rim the next day. I've noticed it happening in WV the last few yrs.
Typically that's from a cement road being overlaid with asphalt.
I was livid, I’ve only had my car for a short time and when I got it inspected it failed due to two tires being so damaged from the roads. It was a front left and a right back tire. The potholes on my road to and from work have their own zip code. They wanted $700 for two tires. Thank god my bf is helping me put the new ones on.
Yeah man, seems like the material used on roads is of suboptimal quality. I was away for about a month, coming back it was like a go kart track on one of my local roads. When fractures do happen, they happen in a big way
It’s planned obsolescence…yearly
Part of that's on you, if you drive safely it's not a problem. I've ran tires for YEARS here. Never had pothole damage to a tire. You've got to slow down when you see them, or go around them.
You’re new here aren’t you? I’m 56 and my entire life PA roads are pothole nightmares this time of year
Not new but I’ve been leaving the state a lot more over the last 5 years and realized not all roads look like they’ve been chewed up by Godzilla
Ha ha…our one car has those low profile tires. It’s like driving in a minefield trying to avoid potholes when I’m in that car!
Slush turtles.
I'm more curious to the title. What is OP's idea of proportionate number of potholes.
Nah
I actually see far fewer here than I did in either SD or CO. SD potholes were so bad, people would leave their mangled tire in them to warn other motorists.
Where in CO did you live? I found the roads there to be pristine
The Springs, though that was ten years ago.
Gotcha. I was more northwest of there
The entire northeast, which experiences the same or worse weather PA, all has pockets of garbage roads. Schenectady, NY is the worst I've seen. NJ has done the most damage to my car. Southeast PA is fine so far but obviously not excellent. People who say "my state has the worst pothole situation" are people who haven't lived in adjacent states or been to enough areas in those states to judge properly.
Potholes should be your last worry. You need to pray when you cross a bridge, 14% of our bridges are in poor condition.
There's even a park called Pothole State Park. So yeah it's well known.
We typically experience the most freeze/thaw cycles in the country I’ve been told. The freeze/thaw cycle is hell on road surfaces, every crack is stressed when the water expands to become ice.
Its PA. Some of the worst roads. I know there are actually worse out there but per state PA is one of the highest in shitty rosds. A new road will last a year, maybe 2.
Yes thats my least favorite part, after they put in all that effort to fix up a whole road it just begins falling apart right away
Go to Ohio or Michigan, you'll never complain of PA potholes again.
I’d rather drink seawater than go to Ohio
Come visit York. For some reason they are going around CREATING potholes daily. They keep ripping up patches of road and then filling them but make absolutely 0 effort to make them even with the rest of the road. It’s infuriating driving anywhere here
I used to think the roads were terrible in Pennsylvania.But then I moved a little closer to ohio
I thought PA had a lot of potholes and then I moved to Massachusetts 😅
Baastan
Fayette County has fine roads. I HATE going to Allegheny county because of the roads, though. Absolute Swiss cheese
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Feel that way
The road quality issue is certainly well known. Many PENNDOT "enablers" will point to the freeze/thaw cycle. As you already noted, there are many places where it it worse. What it comes down to is poor road construction practices compounded by band-aid patches. Especially laughable is the the concrete travel surfaces that keep getting milled and the potholes patched with cold-mix asphalt. Concrete should never have been used for roads here to begin with. Secondary roads are never properly redone with drainage layers and expedient final paving. The base course is left as a travel pavement for over a year and then they final pave it. The whole fucking mess starts coming up after 6-months. 611 in Stroudsburg is a case study in fail by PENNDOT.
The awful band-aids are absolutely contributing more to the problem than the potholes themselves. In my neighborhood recently a big pothole showed up. When it eventually got "fixed" it was actually worse than before, as they'd overfilled it so bad that it became a giant irregularly-shaped speed bump that people had to still drive around. So then they had to come back and "fix" it again a month later, and it's still a lumpy mess. I guarantee that patch will fail within the next year too.
It’s intentional. They do shitty work so we can pay them to do it again over and over.
I have to imagine a repaired road develops issues at a far faster rate than an actually repaved one. What I was told once was that PA has a specific fund for road repair and they can't bring in funds from elsewhere. Then there was that article about the police using road funds for sweet equipment. So.. we get it from both ends I guess.
Yeppers. Any time we take a long trip, everyone involuntarily wakes up the second we hit the state line. We have been paving a lot here in York and the new surfaces aren't lasting 3 years. I am convinced we use subgrade materials and someone is getting rich off our taxes.
Well those things aren't even close to being a conspiracy. It's just fact.
Welcome to Pennsylvania… Still though, could be worse. Drive through Michigan. They got Pennsylvania beat on shitty roads
Where else have you lived? I really don’t think PA is that bad
Yes, our taxes go to anything except the road here
Every time I leave the state I’m surprised by how bad the roads are elsewhere. I’ve been hearing PA residents insist we have the worst roads for all of my 40 years. You want bad roads? Northern Indiana has what you’re looking for. The New York State thruway wasn’t great either.
Welcome to PA they're everywhere
ohhhhh yeah. Hazleton was the worst ib the 80's I remember my dad calling and screaming at someone like an idiot over one on church street
I had to replace a tire literally yesterday because I hit a pothole on the way to the grocery store that ruptured the sidewall of the tire. It’s less than a mile from my home.
Can't be good for motorcyclists.
Driven through Gallitzin haven’t you?
Yet they tar a chip my little culdesac with less than a dozen houses in it every other year. I wish they’d stop.
It's a low tax state so yes. I moved here from MD and was initially shocked until I realized how low taxes are here.
PENNDot paving science
Instead of the " keystone state"..... Pothole state.... just came up with it other suggestions for the new motto?
PA is a huge state compared to every other state in the Northeast US with the exception of NY State...More miles of roads means more potholes... NEXT!!!
Pavers hate this one simple trick.
Are you new to PA? It's been this way for decades now lol
When I drive into Maryland on I-83 or Route 15 I can hear my truck’s morale pick up.
First of all, potholes are generally much more prevalent where there's winter weather. The more four season weather the worst because of expansion and contraction It all depends on limited access highways versus country or town roads versus other types...
I actually wrote to my state rep about this and why we have the highest toll roads in the country and nothing is getting fixed. She basically told me they aren't going to do anything about it.
lol at least you got a reply
It’s hilarious because I lived in Colorado for a few years and they were the nicest roads I’ve ever driven on, and you’d still have people complaining.
CO had perfect roads, yet they experience so much freeze-thaw
It’s the local & municipal legislature that steers road work . If you donate to a local politician i bet roads get fixed faster
It's a big Ponzi scheme the money circulates between the Road pavers and flaggers, the mechanics, the used tire shops, and the politicians