Friday, February 16, 2007

The Worst Roads in the USA

Bad roads and bad road signs... Both are huge pet peeves of mine. This week, I followed signs twice to nowhere. And I live in this town. Drives me nuts! Coming south on I-35, I followed signs to I-44 to cut diagonally across town from NE to SW. The exit ramp "to I-44" took me directly to the turnpike to Tulsa. Nice. You can imagine my frustration when I saw that the first place to turn around (legally) was 44 miles away. So, I spent a pleasant hour and a half driving halfway to Tulsa and back.

Oklahoma has some pretty poor road signs... and terrible roads.

My first few months living here, I bent three rims on my car from water-filled pot holes. I thought Chicago was bad, but after several years of living there I never bent a rim. And the City of Chicago would actually reimburse people who bent rims due to poor streets and highways.

An acquaintance of mine blogged recently about the big traffic jam he was in a few days ago in Pennsylvania. They spent 18 hours in their car, unable to move or turn around. People were running out of gas, etc. Quite the mess. He referenced this article that ranks PA to have the 2nd worst roads in the US according to pro truckers. I don't see how that can be since I've lived in PA for half my life. Oklahoma has worse roads by far, and our "cross-town" I-40 is #5 on the worst roads in the US. PA's I-80 is #2 on the worst road list, but is also #2 on the most improved road list.

I think they got the bad rating just because they get more truckers through there than Oklahoma does.

1 comment:

Allison Sangree said...

Hey, we're not complaining!
Actually, I'd really like to be on those bad OK roads now on the way to you =)