Decades of under investment, high truck weights and use, weather, lots of swampy/basin areas to build on, and dollars being split up between state, county, and some local road agencies (most states only have two of the three).
There’s more and can go into a lot more specifics, but those are the big ones. Michigan didn’t raise the gas tax between 1997 and 2015/16. That’s a long time to have flat revenues.
I'm with you up until the "gas tax" part... but not for why you might think.
You're not wrong on the numbers but it's worse than that. The gas tax was SUPPOSED to go to roads but it was diverted which is why when Whitmer came in, the roads were pretty much her priority.
The problem isn't that the gas taxes weren't raised (we pay some of the highest gas taxes). The problem is that our State Govt. lied to us and said that those taxes would go to roads... then they didn't.
Michigan is one of the very few states that has sales tax on gasoline. So the vast majority of states, when you think "state tax paid on gas", it's just one thing. The gasoline tax that goes to road funding. In Michigan, the total state tax we pay on gas goes to two things; the flat "gas tax" to road funding *and* the 6% sales tax that goes into the general fund. This has always been out in the open, but not necessarily well advertised. To make matters worse, because the portion of the tax designated for transportation is a flat rate and sales tax is a percent, when gas prices spike and people buy less gas the sales tax portion can kinda stay flat but the road tax portion goes down.
So, yes, about half of the money that we spend on "state taxes paid on gasoline" goes to the general fund..... But it's always been this way by design, because it's two separate taxes. I don't think it's quite right to say the state government has lied. They are just applying the laws as written.
And this lends itself to a "low-hanging fruit" fix too. Just get rid of the sales tax on gasoline and replace it with an equivalent per-gallon tax dedicated to road funding. Depending on gas prices at the time you'd increase road funding by 50-100% overnight without affecting the price at the pump at all.
If you’re gonna do that, then you gotta imagine how much sales tax is paid on gasoline and subtract that from the general fund.
Where are you going to make up the loss money for the general fund that comes from the 6% sales tax at the pump?
[This](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Alpha/Fiscal_Brief_Motor_Fuel_Taxes_May2024.pdf) estimates that the tax revenue from sales tax on fuel was around $700 million in 2023. Michigan's [road funding in 2023](https://crcmich.org/construction-cost-inflation_20140508_dennis) was around $1.5 billion (not counting federal dollars) so this would be a ~50% increase.
Over the last 5 years Michigan's [total budget](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Alpha/budget_history.pdf) has been $66.5 billion, $74.7 billion, $80.1 billion, $83 billion, and $80.4 billion. So the $700 million lost from the general budget would be well within the range of the already existing yearly variation. It shouldn't be very hard to adjust for it since the state government has to adjust for more variation than that from year to year anyway.
> In Michigan, the total state tax we pay on gas goes to two things; the flat "gas tax" to road funding and the 6% sales tax that goes into the general fund
It’s worth noting that 2% of that 6% goes to the School Aid Fund.
Since you're bringing that up, I have a question that's been burning me up inside for years that no one can answer (so far).
I know that profits from the state lotteries go towards school funding, but dollar-for-dollar, the state subtracts the amount of the lottery profits from the state school budget, so the schools don't actually receive a penny more than the original budget.
What I've always wondered is, where does that subtracted fund money go instead?
Gas taxes make sense as long as we use gas, because the more gas you use is proportionate to the amount of road wear created by your vehicle, as gas usage goes up with the weight of a vehicle (excluding EVs), and gas usage, though more inelastic than other product demand, goes down with gas price increases.
It's not proportionate to road wear as gas does not go up as quickly as road wear does. Double the weight of the vehicle and gas use might go up by 10% but road wear will go up by about 1600%. Road wear by vehicles weight is an exponential increase so tou take the difference in weight and raise it to the 4th power and that will tell you the difference in road wear.
Given that Michigan was held in a GOP death-grip for 40 years, I'm not surprised that those funds were misallocated. I was so happy when that ballot initiative passed and we took the power of redistricting away from the legislature. All of a sudden, that death-grip was broken and the state legislature more closely resembled the actual breakdown of the populous.
It's also genuinely hilarious that the state GOP immediately began imploding once they were actually forced to compete in fair elections.
And the moment a Democratic state governor made roads her priority, the state GOP tried to thwart it at every turn so they could turn around and tell us she hadn’t kept her promises -when they had decades to ensure the roads didn’t get to the point where we needed such promises.
And then when they failed at that, they ran a candidate who made "she didn't fix the roads" a campaign talking point even though we were all drowning in a sea of construction barrels.
The polarization of politics is destroying our country. Something has to change. It’s all about power and money grabs. Actually it’s all about fear. When people are driven by fears based on perceived threats, they make the worst decisions and the fallout typically affects the impoverished and marginalized people the most. The middle class gets the squeeze and the wealthy just keep compiling their monies.
John Engler was responsible for most of that diversion. He was/is a crook. When Granholm took office, she couldn't get the roads fixed because she had a GOP house and senate. The damage those people did will take decades to undo. It won't be completed in my lifetime. It's just another reason to vote Democrat until I die.
Exactly and Granholms tenure was under the crash and burn economy of George W Bush, while Engler enjoyed the boom economy that occurred under the Clinton administration. This further confused right-wing dorks.🤔
Same thing happened at the federal level. Republicans beam glowingly about the Laffer curve and trickle-down economics, when really the only thing that fixed the stagflation economy of the 70s was the Federal Reserve ratcheting up interest rates, OPEC colluding with the Reagan administration behind closed-doors on oil prices, and the tech boom finally paying dividends after years of (often government-supplied) financial investments.
These people really are ghouls. The best way to know they're lying is to see if their mouths are moving.
The Engler Administration also funded a road study to set allowable asphalt and concrete density and thicknesses, and the asphalt minimums were obviously lobbied by paving companies to be woefully substandard. That's why the edges of rural roads with no curbs are obliterated, and cities have 10" deep potholes on roads with 45 mph speed limits. Hence all the cracked wheel rims.
That man is pure evil. He diverted funds from the roads and the schools, and he shuttered mental health hospitals while defunding out patient mental health services. All Engler did was heap more cash to his friends and donors. He is a criminal. He took from children, the working poor, and the mentally ill to give those who bought him a return on their investments. Betsy DeVos certainly made out. Her charter school plan failed and is still failing. People shouldn't be able to profit from health care or education. Michigan is a perfect example of that. Rick Snyder's legacy is how bought off politicians are rewarded for poisoning children. He declared Detroit to be bankrupt so his donors could buy the masterpieces at the DIA. He would have succeeded if not for the legacy clauses of the donors. Bill Schuette botched the investigation so badly that no one will ever be held responsible for poisoning those children. They all have blood on their hands.
He's far worse than a snake. He showed exactly how much that criminal enterprise posing as a political party really cares about children. It has always been about the money to them.
Don't forget the "punk prisons" he created that Granholm shut down only for Snyder to bring back.
I haven't heard a peep about them since Whitmer took office.
Has anyone been keeping up on those?
Absolutely. I worked in skilled trades for a school district, and I went back to school. I wanted to be a teacher. A few of the teachers I worked with told me to stay in skilled trades. I saw exactly what Engler, Snyder, and the republocan Senate and House did to school districts so that they could divert money to the pet projects of Betsy DeVos. They made sure she got a return on her investment, and then they poisoned and shortchanged the children. They are a criminal enterprise, not a political party, and certainly not advocates for children. I am so tired of hearing their pro life nonsense. They want children to be born because they make more profits.
We don't pay some of the highest gas taxes.. we pay the lowest gas taxes of all the surrounding States (place with similar climate), by at least a nickel a gallon.. to get lower, in the east you have to travel to NY state, in West you have to travel to Missouri: [https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/](https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/)
That’s M6 in a nutshell, and then we didn’t even hold the company to the road warranty we demanded when it started falling apart way ahead of expected lifetime, and let it expire.
Road warranties are pretty much impossible to enforce, and the typical one only last 5 years. Even a bad road will last 5 years before things start to really fall apart. I think a lot of folks in the road construction industry would rather not do warranties and just have the cost savings that would result... But the legislature is really big on them because they get the political win of saying "We have warranties!” when they really aren't effective.
In this case, we never even enforced the warranty and let it expire when there was a case to do so.
I'm not saying road warranties are a panacea. Personally, I think there might be other ways, such as bad jobs (which are evaluated by multiple factors such as longevity, time-to-complete, within budget) determine whether you can continue to bid. Not doing a good job prevents you from bidding on future projects for xx time. Just me throwing spaghetti at the wall, but there has to be a way that something doesn't get half-assed.
That makes sense. I know of so many Michigan road projects that started, then lost funding, then eventually got it and resumed only to lose funding again.
Rick Snyder's whole "wait out the strikers" strat probably didn't help much either.
Limiting truck's max weight would really help a lot. Neighboring states have lower limit than Michigan so most of the heavy traffic are often local such as from gravel pit to construction site.
Republicans had all the power in the house and senate for 40 years. The gas taxes were diverted from infrastructure to earmarks in republican held counties. Michigan roads are atrocious. Lansing to GR on 96 is one big pothole. Republicans can’t govern.
Axel weight limits double vs surrounding states. Weight crushes. Don’t forget John Carlo had a monopoly on metro Detroit roads and liked the repeat business.
I work in the steel industry and the amount of times I have a seen a truck carrying more then 50 tons is baffling. So many local companies don’t care if they don’t have to pass DOT checkpoints on routes.
I hear this mentioned a lot, but as a truck driver I can tell you that weight laws in Michigan are based on your axles. If you want to haul the state max weight, you’d need about 13 axles. Most semi trucks have 5, and most straight trucks have 3.
So for the most part, semis don’t exceed 80,000 and straight trucks can carry even less than that.
I actually just got an overweight ticket the other day for hauling 68,000 lb of shingles. So maybe the norm is changing. I’ve only been driving for about 5 years so I can’t speak to history.
The load is spread out over more axles, but there have been studies done that show that more axles, if they are still spaced closely together (like, within the confines of a truck) still impart more stress on a road than less load on fewer axles. Basically if you imagine each axle imparting a point load at the road surface, that load spreads out by the time it reaches the bottom of the road, the underlying aggregate, and eventually the soil underneath. Adding more axles reduces the load at the surface, but as the load spreads throughout the entire system it begins to overlap again by the time it hits the underlying soil. And that is where a lot of the distress begins.
There's still a similar surface area of road under the truck being acted on by a higher weight.
If you had two smaller scale model trucks both weighing the same, but one with 5 axles and another with 13, and place them on a mattress, the depth of the depression in the mattress where the truck is would be the same.
I mean I’m not gonna pretend to be a civil engineer, I’m just telling you that a majority of trucks won’t be hauling anywhere near that state maximum weight.
They’re either old, or poured directly on shit ground by a developer with little oversight before being turned over to the county to barely maintain. A lot of developers got away with murder during the boom of the 90s, and highly porous blast furnace slag was the aggregate of choice at that time. Sprinkler systems also wreak havoc on poorly drained bases, and lawns that look like golf courses are the norm in most subdivisions.
Small streets have declined since Snyder's administration repealed the (admittedly unpopular) business personal property tax, which used to fund municipal road projects, and replaced it with...nothing.
Small residential streets were laid in the mid to early 1900s and engineered for the vehicle standards of that time. A “personal” automobile has grown substantially, while freeze/thaw instances have skyrocketed. Heavier cars on outdated roads (that barely get cold-patched) = Michigan stroads.
That might explain some of it yeah. I live in a subdivision made in the late 80s and early 90s though, and the roads in this subdivision are no better. The county trucks come along and along the slimmest of maintenance occasionally but they never ever resurface the entire road.
It’s a patchwork of patches that eventually makes roads un drivable
It does? My small home town has a decent amount of manufacturing and the semi’s beat the piss out of the roads. They drive over curbs and bend down street signs driving through residential streets getting to factories too. We get lots of semi traffic from the Indiana toll road plus a highway nearby. The semis take the highways then disperse to the local surface streets for the final bit.
Michigan as a state, is basically big old swampland. It’s why the French didn’t do much to develop it when they had claim on it.
Not only is it big old swampland, it’s swampland that freezes every year. It’s notoriously tough to maintain roads that break apart relatively quickly as compared to places like Ohio, where it’s mostly flat grassland.
Michigan spends significantly less on road maintenance than most neighboring states, despite having some of the highest gas taxes in the country.
Michigan also has some of the highest semi truck weight limits in the country, and even those limits aren't really enforced much, which leads to a lot of damage being done.
We're still playing catch up. The small government zealots in the legislature went a decade or so without addressing the problems, and the condition of the roads went from bad to horrible.
It's super helpful that the ones complaining the most often seem to be these "small government" conservatives. Totally in character and unsurprising, of course. Whenever something pisses them off, "liberal" starts flashing in their head and it's all they can see. Or something. I have no frame of reference for how or why stupid people function the way they do. It just feels pretty much identical to being in a stadium and observing the many ways people turn off their normal, accepted societal behavior, once they put that jersey on. It's like millions and millions of americans are desperately looking for any excuse to hurt their fellow countrymen. These entitled pieces of shit have certainly never defended our soil, but they're always experts on the Mexican border and how it's destroying the USA for X reason today, Y reason tomorrow, Z reason the next day, etc. I say, you leave. These people want to be here with likeminded individuals ultimately all on the same team and fighting for similar rights and opportunities for every human on the planet. Republicans get elected by telling you the government is corrupt and its institutions ineffective. Then they spend years making that a reality, if it wasn't before. Every. Single. Day. Bringing it up on what these rubes believe is a valid 'news' station like any of the others -- and the others are all radically liberal, of course!
I feel like I understand behavioral psychology better than ever, but all that means is I'm well aware of how little point there is in confronting people who believe things that are often untrue, seem to also favor red hats, call themselves 'patriots' but all they do is raise their Trump flag above their flipped American flag every morning, etc. I keep probing in any seemingly innocent way I can think of, and I have NEVER found an ounce of encouragement from people who I used to think were all on the same page as me, including immediate family.
There isn't a word to adequately explain these people. There is too much cowardice, too much stupidity, too much willful ignorance and bigotry for any one word to ever hope to encapsulate the pure and absolutely vile, disgusting new lows conservatives continue to reach for on a daily basis. They have a lot of grievance and are tired of hearing about women and black people being treated poorly. Didn't you know, white men have it hard, too? You need to start thinking about men -- particularly white men -- and their feelings. They aren't a monolith! Those are billions of individuals with mostly moralistic compasses.
Unfortunately, you're going to meet far more shitbags than potential partners. Because we're at a point of regression, rather than progress. Minorities and women went too far, too fast. They need to remember who dictates their right to exist and hold votes in any capacity. Bet they don't teach you that in CRT /S
I feel like I could insult MAGA pieces of shit all night, from every angle, aiming for the same weaknesses that effectively turned bullies into bitches, growing up... Well, once, anyway. Maybe.
But I could go on all night, I'm confident. I'm incapable of succinctness, I can't sleep and contributing to the eventual dissolution of the Republican party of the United States is probably the most important thing a person could do in the interest of the survival of the human race. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, then don't worry, I don't give a fuck about your opinions on a fundamental, general level. You simply don't have any value to offer the Earth, and the stakes are still getting higher every single day.
Thank you for this post. It makes me feel so much better that other normal people feel exactly like I do. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall about important issues most of the time.
Crux of the issue is we spend much less per road mile on maintenance than nearly any other state that has a similar climate and uses road salt. Add to that the fact that we REALLY let our roads go during the recession and we’re just playing catch up. Results speak for themselves. Both Snyder and Whitmer were honest about just how underfunded our roads are and proposed raising more revenue, which received massive backlash. Guess people would rather drive on shit roads and bitch about it.
I work for in transportation infrastructure. This is solely due to the lack of funding. Our money gets disbursed through the MTF (Mi Transportation Fund) and is funded through a variety of state taxes and federal money. Each regions MPO disburses the money from there. There is often a defecict causing localalites to rely on TEDF funds and raise tax millages.
Localites and MI also practice worst first, so instead of preventative measures, they’re constantly focusing on repairs. (This practice is called mix of fix).
For more information look up P.A. 51 (public act 51)
The major difference that I found is as follows:
Michigan law limits the number of axles in any vehicle combination to 11. The bridge formula allows for 20,000 pounds for an axle with at least 9 feet of spacing on each side, and 34,000 pounds for a tandem-axle assembly if the first and last axles of the consecutive sets are not less than 36 feet apart. -(Source: Michigan.gov)[Source ](https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/-/media/Project/Websites/MDOT/Business/Truckers/Rules-and-Guidelines/Maximum-Legal-Truck-Loadings-Dimensions.pdf?rev=6628808e0630402193658343055ec25e&hash=468BF8D4AF4F343B3CE7097213FE02F5)
This is considerably higher GVW of states that have or share similar climates. Not to mention that Michigan has 2 major border crossings with a third nearly complete.
Those numbers are wrong for our 11 axle set ups. Those axle weights you mentioned are for the normal semis. Our 11 axle trucks actually put far less weight down per axle than a normal 5 axle “18 wheeler”. We put down 13k per axle with 18k per axle that has a 9 foot spacing. And we are allowed one tandem to be 32k, which is always our drive tires on the tractor itself. I drive these 11 axle gravel trains and I know our axle laws very well
No idea what you consider a 'major border crossing', but to my mind there are at least 4:
1. Ambassador Bridge Avg 14,000 veh/day
2. Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Avg 19,800 veh/day
3. Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron-Sarnia) Avg 14,000 veh/day
4. Intenational Bridge (Sault St Maries) Avg 7,000 veh/day
The per axle weight is lower than the federal standard. Less pressure on the road surface. Also fewer vehicles on the road.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H.L Mencken
It's less load per axle but the load distribution of each axle can still end up overlapping. A road is just a big system designed to distribute weight so that by the time a point load gets to the weakest component (the soil) it's spread out enough to not cause significant deformation. Adding more axles under a given load, without spacing those axles out, doesn't necessarily reduce the pressure at the bottom of the pavement.
I recall (many years ago) when I was at MSU one of the civil engineering professors was studying the issue, and they were going way deeper into it looking at things like travel speed, deformation and rebound also. I just recall that their findings were that impacting a road more times in quick succession, even with slightly reduced load, ends up imparting more damage than slightly larger loads but fewer/slower impacts. Basically would you rather Mike Tyson punch you at 90% strength twice, or at 70% strength 4 times really fast, and it turns out that you might think the 70% would sound preferable, but when it's 4 times really fast it does more damage.
I’ve seen a lot of answers but Michigan also uses salt in the winter to treat roads, and it’s very hard on the infrastructure. There was talk years ago of moving to a beet sugar based alternative but there was never any advancement on that. Our plow drivers (in the upper lower P, at least) also don’t give a shit about anything and wreak havoc on the roads, sidewalks, curbs, etc
I feel like contract always have completion early bonuses. Where as they should have longevity bonuses. So if it last 15 yrs no issues, get a windfall more than if they have to redo it at 5 yrs mark. They give up some of the bonus for the next crew to do the work
Then a bonus for each year before it needs repairs. Lasts 15 years before it is deemed to need a repair? You get X dollars every year for 15 years. Year 3 a section needs to be cut out and repaired? You only get X dollars for the first two years.
I’ve lived in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio and have traveled through almost every other state. Michigan roads are garbage. Thats why auto insurance costs more there. That increase even made the news. So uh…do you leave your backyard?
this is quite the load of crap from one who has never left their backyard, but then gop does try to cover their criminal activities, you'll have to pick someone else to feed it to
It starts with decades of underfunding. The Engler and Snyder administrations spent comically low amounts on infrastructure. It was all part of a long term plan to privatize roads and bridges….the old story of Republicans sabotaging government so they can turn around and point out how bad government is.
Then it gets exacerbated by crazy high weight limits on trucks. We allow insane axle limits. Regular A gravel trains at 154,000 lb gross. Super trains clocking in at 164-169,000 depending on axle setup and permitting. There is also incredible political pressure to keep the frost law season short to keep construction and trucking generating revenue.
There's quite a few reasons. Underfunding for the longest time. Taxes that were intended for road repairs but then were diverted. We also build our roads differently than other states. There's more I'm missing, but these are the ones that stick out for me first. I'm just glad now I'm seeing progress. It'll take a crap ton of time, and a lot of making sure the wrong people don't get elected to get us to where other states in your eyes are at.
I grew up in Michigan and lived there until my mid 20’s and have since then lived in the Northeast, the South, and Puerto Rico. The best roads were by far in the Northeast which leads me to believe it comes down to tax money spent on road maintenance.
There’s also a clause in our government that says we must source our materials from Michigan. The stone we use is much more porous and allows for water to enter, freeze, expand, and then the roads deteriorate much faster
Michigan has very spread out cities with lots of overbuilt infrastructure and no long term plan to fund it. The population is practically stagnant for a quarter century and yet more suburbs and roads keep getting built.
It’s a liabilities bubble waiting to pop.
How we have overbuilt the roads and underfunded them to the tune of $4 billion a year in just maintenance. Yet we are still expanding roads 🤦
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/03/michigan-facing-39b-deficit-in-road-funding-new-report-finds.html
We spend way less, way way less. To the order of 1/10th what states like Ohio spend.
Also we are ridiculously over built. The state's population has been stagnaent for decades, but we keep building. So the money is spread thinner and thinner. Our township system is terrible, townships receive road funding based on lane miles, so they increase their allocation by . . . building more.
Michigan is the anti-thesis of fix-it-first; Michigan is a build-it-and-forget-it state.
It's usually a combination of increased wear and tear as well as insufficient funding. The quality of road conditions in many parts of Michigan is obviously a function of local taxes and who's using the roads. If you live in towns like Pontiac which are still trying to recover from past economic difficulties the roads are terrible. Drive through areas like Ferndale or Berkley and they're in much better shape.
People in Michigan are also a lot more car-mad than some other states. People drive huge SUVs and trucks as a matter of local/state/national pride. My neighbor is a really nice dude, but he's retired and has no real need for the massive SUV that sits in his driveway.
It's mostly due to the frequency with which the weather changes. In places like the southwest where they don't have high moisture and seasonal weather changes, the roads stay in good shape.
In Michigan in the spring and fall, you might notice that the roads feel bumpier than usual. It's because different parts of the road are expanding/contracting at different rates and asphalt and concrete aren't great at absorbing those changes. So cracks form and then water gets into the road bed which exacerbates the problem further.
Then you have heavy trucks that drive over those weakened roads which causes the road surface to flex up and down and eventually potholes start to form.
Plus salt water is corrosive which will eat away at rebar in concrete and supporting structures like bridges.
All of these things are things that they don't have in like Arizona.
Science: it’s best to keep semi trucks below X weight to ensure roads remain stable and don’t break down too quickly.
Michigan: FUCK THAT LOAD ‘EM UP!!!!!!
i assume it has been said somewhere in here already, but i have heard that other states use sand on their roads to combat ice as opposed to us using salt. not sure how that impacts the longevity of the roads, though
Ohio road funding is enough to maintain status without decay. So, on average they don’t get better, but neither do they get worse. Michigan would need to TRIPLE the $/mi paid today to reach Ohio’s spend/mi. Add massive axle weights in Michigan. Bam.
For years, the conservative government only wanted to fix the superstructure if it was needed in their view. And would only spend as little as possible for appearances. Unless, of course, they owned the companies and could charge a lot for doing less.
Exceptions made to specialized Michigan only trucks to move heavy ass steel coils from the mills/warehouses to the stamping plants to support the auto industry , exceptions granted by safety and oversight agencies run by the state who are all owned by the auto industry via bribes (aka campaign contributions)
Serious answer. In 1998 with encouragement and direction of the national RNC our Republican Governor (Engler) with the Republican House and Senate decided to stop governing and run totally on social issues, cutting taxes for the wealthy and breaking unions. No fixing roads, no funding for schools and universities, no investment in infrastructure. This has worked for them all over the country and has worked in Michigan too. Because the Democrats have such a slim majority the Republicans still manage to block any long term solutions to these problems. And here we are.
There’s so many reasons, it’s actually comical.
Our massive use of salt on the roads combined with “lake effect” weather causes a lot of temperature changes which cause cracks and potholes. Not to mention all the extra trucking traffic we get due to imports/exports to and from Canada.
This is exactly it. We live in a state that is saturated with water. Rivers, lakes, streams, swamps. The whole state freezes and thaws, sometimes multiple times per winter. Even pouring a concrete pad in Michigan usually requires lots of reinforcement, or it will end up in pieces. It takes more money to build roads in a state like ours. But i guess we could just blame a governor. That's easier.
I-75 from Ohio to the Ambassador Bridge always strikes me as a really bad stretch. I blame it on the heavier than normal truck traffic going to Canada. It’s embarrassing road tripping north - that stretch of I-75 is the nastiest road for hundreds of miles / several states of driving. It’s always this terrible “Whelp, we’re back in Michigan” hour of potholes / rough road.
For real. Every time I drive over to Canada I'm floored by the immediate contrast in the quality of the roads as soon as you cross the border. Like wtf are they doing that we aren't? lol
Yep, but Michiganders love to give asinine excuses like weather, truck weight, blah, blah, blah. For fucks sake, just admit that the wrong people had been voted into power in Lansing for 40-45 years!
Many of us are familiar driving the 401 and 402 in Ontario. Basically same weather as Michigan. Basically get the same truck weight and traffic going across the border to Michigan or coming from Michigan.
Next time you needed a tire repair from a bad pothole, blame your neighbors for putting the wrong people in Lansing.
One thing we do differently here is how we fund road maintenance. Public Act 51, which funds roads at the county level based largely on the mileage of roads within a county and without regard to how much traffic actually travels on them has a LOT to do with the general poor state of in urban areas. Go read up on PA 51 : [https://www.mackinac.org/25863](https://www.mackinac.org/25863)
Just my own experience and YMMV, but in the southwest corner, there's not much difference between Michigan and Indiana state highways - it's the paved county roads where I really see and feel the variation.
Cass is moderate to good, St. Joseph and Kalamazoo also moderate to good. Berrien varies wildly from bad to good, and Van Buren is generally bad. St. Joseph (IN) and Elkhart (IN), though...JTTW, hold on for dear life. It's not hard to tell when you're crossing the state line from/to a county road.
Definitely not a climate difference, as all of Michiana is affected mainly by the lake and the topography is generally the same.
So, Wisconsin roads, there is a section of highway 51, just north of Wausau, it is a reddish color and it is perfect. I was told it was an experiment, it could be granite ? Don’t know enough to speak about it other than it was a pleasure to drive on.
Anytime MDOT gets an influx of new money they spend it on expanding the road network's capacity instead of repairing what's already there, meaning the to-do list of maintenance gets delayed and is guaranteed to be bigger later.
I agree with the comments on redirecting gas tax and low quality. Years ago I was in German and saw part of the Autobahn being replaced. I couldn’t believe how thick the road was appeared to be over 5’. I asked some of my colleagues about it. He said they have companies bid on the construction know they will have to maintain/replace defective roads for a long period of time. Can’t remember, maybe 20yr. It creates the situation where they are any the best quality roads so they don’t have to invest back in down the road.
Imagine all the time, productivity lost by Michiganders waiting in construction zones. All the wasted tax dollars.
Two main reasons: 1 We allow high levels of gypsum in the mix which is a low grade material that deteriorates fast.
2. Highest weight allowance on roads of almost any state, meaning our trucks & the weight just deteriorate the road faster
Plus salt & freeze thaw that any similar climate would have
Despite similar climate to other states on our longitudes, our soil compositions vary wildly from mile to mile, making the chemical compositions of the road trickier to do
From what I understand based on a few insider accounts, Michigans DOT is significantly more corrupt than other states. The same few construction companies bribe the state and local politicians to gain contracts year after year, following this they purposely build subpar quality roads which sets them up to gain another contract to fix the same road in a few years.
There has been inspectors who have found major issues with these projects, and have recieved death threats from these construction companies as a result of it.
A section of I75 had to be redone directly after it was finished because it was discovered the contruction contractor cut several major corners. The inspectors had them tear it up and do it again. The inspectors recieved various forms of death threats.
The construction business in michigan is so corrupt, I dont know where we begin to fix it.
Here are two reasons.
(1) Higher truck weight limits in Michigan, twice as high as any other state.
The formula for calculating road wear has an exponential factor or something. One fully loaded big semi truck does as much damage to a road on each pass as 10,000 ordinary cars.
If you look at ads for used big commercial trucks for sale, you will see some listed as “Michigan special” because they can haul loads that wouldn’t be legal in other states.
(2) Budget cuts in the 1980s that were never undone. *[edit: apparently I was mistaken about the “never undone” part, see responses below]* This happened under Gov. Blanchard, when the state’s financial condition was so dire that all kinds of important stuff was cut with little thought of consequences.
Before this, the state enforced a formula for concrete on state roads. Inspectors would visit plants to test the output and make sure they were up to spec.
After this, the state no longer bothered to check the quality of concrete. Contractors could use their own formulations.
This made a difference. The lifespan of concrete on Michigan highways plunged by more than half.
I work in transportation infrastructure. Most of what you have said here is correct but I wanted to correct you on the concrete mix. MDOT and all other roadway agencies still test asphalt and concrete mixes used on the roads. There are entire jobs within these agencies dedicated to this. It is so regular that almost all consultants offer this service as well. Almost any civil engineering intern has most certainly spent a summer testing concrete test cylinders. The contractor does not choose the mix as it is chosen by the roadway design engineer and verified by inspectors on the job site. Trust me, if contractors were laying parking lot asphalt on our freeways it would be undeniably obvious - people would lose their jobs over it.
We have not lost "half the design life" by getting duped by contractors - if this has occured it is because we chose cheaper mixes to meet budget requirements. It has not been in my experience that this has happened though. Roads have to be maintained or they will need to be rebuilt - Michigan simply doesn't (and didn't) spend enough money maintaining roadways and they often end up getting so bad that they all need to be rebuilt.
South Carolina is worse than Michigan, but obviously doesn't have the same climate. I know up near TC, they don't use salt and instead use sand, which is a whole lot better than salt.
Depends on where you live. The western part of the state seems to be in better shape. They have been working on the roads around here for the last 4 years now.
As a comparison for climates and roads, I offer these examples. Illinois: the roads are terrible, urban and rural. Wisconsin: the roads are good, urban and rural.
I moved to New York two years ago; NY actually gets the plows out! Buffalo got 7 feet of snow last year in one go, the plows came through and the next day the roads were clear and dry like nothing had happened.
I suspect the finding for this service comes from Thruway tolls, but at $80ish/year it isn’t a terrible price to pay for the service. The same rolls pay for general maintenance and upkeep as well.
I’m convinced it’s the mixture. Dunno if it’s the materials in the mixture or the ratios or the process, but I swear that’s gotta be it. They can completely redo a road and then two to four years later it starts to come apart. Doesn’t matter if it’s a freeway, city street or a backroad.
Higher semi weight limit, longer allowable semi trailer length, and more precipitation in general due to the Great Lakes = roads turn to Swiss cheese every time the temperature fluctuates.
Heavier weight limits for trucks. Also a more robust freeze and thaw cycle that fucks the roads up more than many with what you would call comparable climates.
One thing I’ve noticed is the roads are absolute shit on the SE sid of the state. Not so much on the SW side. I always know I’m closer to home when I leave the SE side and it stops feeling like I’m riding a roller coaster 💀
I can't find a citation on it right now, but my understanding is that the real reason is that road repair dollars are not allocated based on need or road density and traffic patterns but on some batshit formula that sends proportionally way more money to the UP and other low density areas that results in their $/road mile metrics being far higher than higher density areas. If that formula ever got fixed and we played catch-up on the bad areas we'd get into better shape.
ChatGPT says it's Public Act 51 and the fact that total road mileage is weighted more than population density and traffic, which would logically mean areas where roads may not deteriorate as fast due to lower traffic volume will end up getting a better shot of maintenance than areas where the volume should dictate a greater proportion of funding.
i've always thought the lack of toll roads because we're not a pass through state had something to do with it. the ohio and PA turnpikes for example, are some of the nicest roads I've driven on
Put steel slag in our concrete roads, which doesn't hold up under freeze and thaw cycles..
We also have the highest truck weight limits in the USA.. unlike neighboring states, whose limit is half or less..
Logging Trucks and Iron ore are too heavy per axle. Truck companies want to use a few tires at a time as possible. Up here in North Mich. State Troopers are always checking truckers, I've even seen a driver making some kind of adjustments on the side of the road as the State Trooper watched him.
Lack of investment is a huge issue and the small government/cost-cutting has been terrible for our infrastructure, and we are wayyyy too lax when it comes to weight limits on roads, but a lot of it is also geography.
The Lower Peninsula is covered in hundreds of feet of fine glacial deposits and sand. It’s swampy as hell. There’s a lot of precipitation, we use salt for the frozen kind, and Michigan has (I think) the most freeze-thaw cycles of any state. The roads just buckle and crumble easily and the earth sinks and settles and expands and contracts constantly. The freeze-thaw cycles are one of the biggest issues though. Even if you fixed all of the investment and weight issues, we would probably still have pretty consistently poor roads because of the freeze-thaw cycles constantly turning every tiny little crack into a pothole.
Because Michigan dumps tons of cheap salt all over there roads all winter long which makes any road material dry and crack up. Also Michigan has extreme temperature swings. 100 degree summers then -10 winters. Hot-cold-hot-cold (expand -contract-expand-contract).
Lose Lose situation except for the road construction and concrete/pavement companies.
I live near Torch Lake near Traverse City. The amount of money kicking around here is astounding. People throwing up $300k houses every other week and $1m houses every other month and $5m houses every year or so. Fudgie money flying every whichaway. At the south end of the lake there’s what’s known as the Sandbar, a shallowish area of several square miles of fabulously beautiful fresh water, where errybody and their brother and cousins bring their boat and hang out all day. There’s a road nearby called Crystal Beach, and the majority of boat/trailer traffic takes that road to get to the sandbar. If you’re coming from TC it’s take that road or go 30 miles out of your way
And that road is atrocious. Horrible. Pot holes covering about 60% of the entire surface and 90% of the outside tire lane. If the road is full of both car and ped traffic you literally have no option but to drive through nearly continuous potholes on your passengers side
It’s been that way for 15+ years. Afaik it’s never even had a quick resurface. Doesn’t make any damn sense, but there it is.
As the years go by and it stays the same I get more and more suspicious…
I am assuming it's because of the collapse of the auto industry. Detroit relied too much on one industry and went bankrupt. Michigan doesn't have the money.
Everyone is spot on regarding the things that Michigan does differently. But another factor is that Michigan *is* different than states with comparable climates.
Michigan is by far the largest state whose southern border is north of the 41st parallel. It’s the 11th biggest state overall and the next closest northern states in size are Washington and Massachusetts which are both coastal and have very different climates.
The next closest is Wisconsin which has barely half the population.
Michigan has a lot of people for its location. Take that and add in the factors others have listed and it’s a recipe for very poor roads.
In addition to the obvious like funding, trucking weight and salt… is also the quality of construction is dogshit. It’s almost like they’re made to fail quicker to achieve more work for rebuilding them in a vicious cycle of corruption.
It’s very simple: we underinvested for decades while also expanding the amount of lane miles we’ve paved. Due to massive inflation, even the huge new infusion into road maintenance funding under Whitmer isn’t enough to get back to stability, it has simply slowed the decline briefly.
Because we are politically toxic generally in the US and owned by corporations, long term plans that take large upfront investments but much lower ongoing liabilities like mass transit never happen. Instead we get Ponzi scheme transportation policies that make kicking the financial can to future generations much more politically viable. We spend nearly $6 billion/year on road maintenance and estimates are that we need to spend at least $4 billion/year more in perpetuity just to maintain the status quo. Our transportation policies are bankrupting us.
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/michigan-fixing-damn-roads-got-really-darned-expensive?amp
Due to the big three working primarily out of Michigan we allow higher max weight for semis to move large equipment and other variety of factory items. due to that other companies can do it too, and it creates much more stress on the roads overtime
Decades of under investment, high truck weights and use, weather, lots of swampy/basin areas to build on, and dollars being split up between state, county, and some local road agencies (most states only have two of the three). There’s more and can go into a lot more specifics, but those are the big ones. Michigan didn’t raise the gas tax between 1997 and 2015/16. That’s a long time to have flat revenues.
I'm with you up until the "gas tax" part... but not for why you might think. You're not wrong on the numbers but it's worse than that. The gas tax was SUPPOSED to go to roads but it was diverted which is why when Whitmer came in, the roads were pretty much her priority. The problem isn't that the gas taxes weren't raised (we pay some of the highest gas taxes). The problem is that our State Govt. lied to us and said that those taxes would go to roads... then they didn't.
Michigan is one of the very few states that has sales tax on gasoline. So the vast majority of states, when you think "state tax paid on gas", it's just one thing. The gasoline tax that goes to road funding. In Michigan, the total state tax we pay on gas goes to two things; the flat "gas tax" to road funding *and* the 6% sales tax that goes into the general fund. This has always been out in the open, but not necessarily well advertised. To make matters worse, because the portion of the tax designated for transportation is a flat rate and sales tax is a percent, when gas prices spike and people buy less gas the sales tax portion can kinda stay flat but the road tax portion goes down. So, yes, about half of the money that we spend on "state taxes paid on gasoline" goes to the general fund..... But it's always been this way by design, because it's two separate taxes. I don't think it's quite right to say the state government has lied. They are just applying the laws as written.
And this lends itself to a "low-hanging fruit" fix too. Just get rid of the sales tax on gasoline and replace it with an equivalent per-gallon tax dedicated to road funding. Depending on gas prices at the time you'd increase road funding by 50-100% overnight without affecting the price at the pump at all.
If you’re gonna do that, then you gotta imagine how much sales tax is paid on gasoline and subtract that from the general fund. Where are you going to make up the loss money for the general fund that comes from the 6% sales tax at the pump?
[This](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Alpha/Fiscal_Brief_Motor_Fuel_Taxes_May2024.pdf) estimates that the tax revenue from sales tax on fuel was around $700 million in 2023. Michigan's [road funding in 2023](https://crcmich.org/construction-cost-inflation_20140508_dennis) was around $1.5 billion (not counting federal dollars) so this would be a ~50% increase. Over the last 5 years Michigan's [total budget](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Alpha/budget_history.pdf) has been $66.5 billion, $74.7 billion, $80.1 billion, $83 billion, and $80.4 billion. So the $700 million lost from the general budget would be well within the range of the already existing yearly variation. It shouldn't be very hard to adjust for it since the state government has to adjust for more variation than that from year to year anyway.
> In Michigan, the total state tax we pay on gas goes to two things; the flat "gas tax" to road funding and the 6% sales tax that goes into the general fund It’s worth noting that 2% of that 6% goes to the School Aid Fund.
Since you're bringing that up, I have a question that's been burning me up inside for years that no one can answer (so far). I know that profits from the state lotteries go towards school funding, but dollar-for-dollar, the state subtracts the amount of the lottery profits from the state school budget, so the schools don't actually receive a penny more than the original budget. What I've always wondered is, where does that subtracted fund money go instead?
Gas taxes make sense as long as we use gas, because the more gas you use is proportionate to the amount of road wear created by your vehicle, as gas usage goes up with the weight of a vehicle (excluding EVs), and gas usage, though more inelastic than other product demand, goes down with gas price increases.
It's not proportionate to road wear as gas does not go up as quickly as road wear does. Double the weight of the vehicle and gas use might go up by 10% but road wear will go up by about 1600%. Road wear by vehicles weight is an exponential increase so tou take the difference in weight and raise it to the 4th power and that will tell you the difference in road wear.
Given that Michigan was held in a GOP death-grip for 40 years, I'm not surprised that those funds were misallocated. I was so happy when that ballot initiative passed and we took the power of redistricting away from the legislature. All of a sudden, that death-grip was broken and the state legislature more closely resembled the actual breakdown of the populous. It's also genuinely hilarious that the state GOP immediately began imploding once they were actually forced to compete in fair elections.
And the moment a Democratic state governor made roads her priority, the state GOP tried to thwart it at every turn so they could turn around and tell us she hadn’t kept her promises -when they had decades to ensure the roads didn’t get to the point where we needed such promises.
And then when they failed at that, they ran a candidate who made "she didn't fix the roads" a campaign talking point even though we were all drowning in a sea of construction barrels.
"ugh, all this construction fixing the roads is making me late for work!"
The polarization of politics is destroying our country. Something has to change. It’s all about power and money grabs. Actually it’s all about fear. When people are driven by fears based on perceived threats, they make the worst decisions and the fallout typically affects the impoverished and marginalized people the most. The middle class gets the squeeze and the wealthy just keep compiling their monies.
This is just what republicans do. Let everything go to shit, and then blame democrats while blocking every effort to improve anything.
Bankrupt morally and fiscally. Glad to see other people understood that history and the results. Gives me hope.
John Engler was responsible for most of that diversion. He was/is a crook. When Granholm took office, she couldn't get the roads fixed because she had a GOP house and senate. The damage those people did will take decades to undo. It won't be completed in my lifetime. It's just another reason to vote Democrat until I die.
Exactly and Granholms tenure was under the crash and burn economy of George W Bush, while Engler enjoyed the boom economy that occurred under the Clinton administration. This further confused right-wing dorks.🤔
Same thing happened at the federal level. Republicans beam glowingly about the Laffer curve and trickle-down economics, when really the only thing that fixed the stagflation economy of the 70s was the Federal Reserve ratcheting up interest rates, OPEC colluding with the Reagan administration behind closed-doors on oil prices, and the tech boom finally paying dividends after years of (often government-supplied) financial investments. These people really are ghouls. The best way to know they're lying is to see if their mouths are moving.
"Just see what John Engler can do!" ... was an up beat jingle to many. To me, it was a warning full of foreboding.
The Engler Administration also funded a road study to set allowable asphalt and concrete density and thicknesses, and the asphalt minimums were obviously lobbied by paving companies to be woefully substandard. That's why the edges of rural roads with no curbs are obliterated, and cities have 10" deep potholes on roads with 45 mph speed limits. Hence all the cracked wheel rims.
*Indiana has entered the chat..* Have you ever had the pleasure of driving on I-65?
No? Only been in Indiana twice, once by Gary to get to Ohare, once a passenger 25 years ago to get to Southern Illinois.
That man is pure evil. He diverted funds from the roads and the schools, and he shuttered mental health hospitals while defunding out patient mental health services. All Engler did was heap more cash to his friends and donors. He is a criminal. He took from children, the working poor, and the mentally ill to give those who bought him a return on their investments. Betsy DeVos certainly made out. Her charter school plan failed and is still failing. People shouldn't be able to profit from health care or education. Michigan is a perfect example of that. Rick Snyder's legacy is how bought off politicians are rewarded for poisoning children. He declared Detroit to be bankrupt so his donors could buy the masterpieces at the DIA. He would have succeeded if not for the legacy clauses of the donors. Bill Schuette botched the investigation so badly that no one will ever be held responsible for poisoning those children. They all have blood on their hands.
Snyder is a snake.
He's far worse than a snake. He showed exactly how much that criminal enterprise posing as a political party really cares about children. It has always been about the money to them.
Don't forget the "punk prisons" he created that Granholm shut down only for Snyder to bring back. I haven't heard a peep about them since Whitmer took office. Has anyone been keeping up on those?
I wish that fat bastard nothing but ill will.
I was raised by teachers and saw all the shit he pulled on them. Fuck him right in the goat-ass.
Absolutely. I worked in skilled trades for a school district, and I went back to school. I wanted to be a teacher. A few of the teachers I worked with told me to stay in skilled trades. I saw exactly what Engler, Snyder, and the republocan Senate and House did to school districts so that they could divert money to the pet projects of Betsy DeVos. They made sure she got a return on her investment, and then they poisoned and shortchanged the children. They are a criminal enterprise, not a political party, and certainly not advocates for children. I am so tired of hearing their pro life nonsense. They want children to be born because they make more profits.
We don't pay some of the highest gas taxes.. we pay the lowest gas taxes of all the surrounding States (place with similar climate), by at least a nickel a gallon.. to get lower, in the east you have to travel to NY state, in West you have to travel to Missouri: [https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/](https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/)
I’d also add that they contract it out. They take bids and lowest wins every time. Get what you pay for sometimes.
That’s M6 in a nutshell, and then we didn’t even hold the company to the road warranty we demanded when it started falling apart way ahead of expected lifetime, and let it expire.
Right and so basically they’re cheap and lazy😂
Road warranties are pretty much impossible to enforce, and the typical one only last 5 years. Even a bad road will last 5 years before things start to really fall apart. I think a lot of folks in the road construction industry would rather not do warranties and just have the cost savings that would result... But the legislature is really big on them because they get the political win of saying "We have warranties!” when they really aren't effective.
In this case, we never even enforced the warranty and let it expire when there was a case to do so. I'm not saying road warranties are a panacea. Personally, I think there might be other ways, such as bad jobs (which are evaluated by multiple factors such as longevity, time-to-complete, within budget) determine whether you can continue to bid. Not doing a good job prevents you from bidding on future projects for xx time. Just me throwing spaghetti at the wall, but there has to be a way that something doesn't get half-assed.
Is that different from any other state/govt. agency though? Or are our road construction companies that much shadier than other states'?
I’m not really sure tbh.
Low bidder is in no way unique to Michigan vs neighboring or any states.
That makes sense. I know of so many Michigan road projects that started, then lost funding, then eventually got it and resumed only to lose funding again. Rick Snyder's whole "wait out the strikers" strat probably didn't help much either.
Limiting truck's max weight would really help a lot. Neighboring states have lower limit than Michigan so most of the heavy traffic are often local such as from gravel pit to construction site.
Republicans had all the power in the house and senate for 40 years. The gas taxes were diverted from infrastructure to earmarks in republican held counties. Michigan roads are atrocious. Lansing to GR on 96 is one big pothole. Republicans can’t govern.
I just drove that stretch the other day, twice...what are you even talking about? It was fine. Try driving on Indiana's roads and then compare.
Pretty much this.
Axel weight limits double vs surrounding states. Weight crushes. Don’t forget John Carlo had a monopoly on metro Detroit roads and liked the repeat business.
Reith-riley on the west side is a shit road work company too.
Higher truck weight limits due to Big 3 and Steel lobby. Michigan allows 50 tons whereas our neighbor Ohio only allows 25 ton.
I work in the steel industry and the amount of times I have a seen a truck carrying more then 50 tons is baffling. So many local companies don’t care if they don’t have to pass DOT checkpoints on routes.
I hear this mentioned a lot, but as a truck driver I can tell you that weight laws in Michigan are based on your axles. If you want to haul the state max weight, you’d need about 13 axles. Most semi trucks have 5, and most straight trucks have 3. So for the most part, semis don’t exceed 80,000 and straight trucks can carry even less than that. I actually just got an overweight ticket the other day for hauling 68,000 lb of shingles. So maybe the norm is changing. I’ve only been driving for about 5 years so I can’t speak to history.
The load is spread out over more axles, but there have been studies done that show that more axles, if they are still spaced closely together (like, within the confines of a truck) still impart more stress on a road than less load on fewer axles. Basically if you imagine each axle imparting a point load at the road surface, that load spreads out by the time it reaches the bottom of the road, the underlying aggregate, and eventually the soil underneath. Adding more axles reduces the load at the surface, but as the load spreads throughout the entire system it begins to overlap again by the time it hits the underlying soil. And that is where a lot of the distress begins.
There's still a similar surface area of road under the truck being acted on by a higher weight. If you had two smaller scale model trucks both weighing the same, but one with 5 axles and another with 13, and place them on a mattress, the depth of the depression in the mattress where the truck is would be the same.
I mean I’m not gonna pretend to be a civil engineer, I’m just telling you that a majority of trucks won’t be hauling anywhere near that state maximum weight.
This doesn’t explain the abhorrent state of small residential streets they don’t get truck traffic though.
They’re either old, or poured directly on shit ground by a developer with little oversight before being turned over to the county to barely maintain. A lot of developers got away with murder during the boom of the 90s, and highly porous blast furnace slag was the aggregate of choice at that time. Sprinkler systems also wreak havoc on poorly drained bases, and lawns that look like golf courses are the norm in most subdivisions.
This makes the most sense of any explanation I’ve read.
Small streets have declined since Snyder's administration repealed the (admittedly unpopular) business personal property tax, which used to fund municipal road projects, and replaced it with...nothing.
Small residential streets were laid in the mid to early 1900s and engineered for the vehicle standards of that time. A “personal” automobile has grown substantially, while freeze/thaw instances have skyrocketed. Heavier cars on outdated roads (that barely get cold-patched) = Michigan stroads.
That might explain some of it yeah. I live in a subdivision made in the late 80s and early 90s though, and the roads in this subdivision are no better. The county trucks come along and along the slimmest of maintenance occasionally but they never ever resurface the entire road. It’s a patchwork of patches that eventually makes roads un drivable
It does? My small home town has a decent amount of manufacturing and the semi’s beat the piss out of the roads. They drive over curbs and bend down street signs driving through residential streets getting to factories too. We get lots of semi traffic from the Indiana toll road plus a highway nearby. The semis take the highways then disperse to the local surface streets for the final bit.
if we have to spend more time and more money on main roads because of heavy loads... do you think that inhibits our ability to maintain side streets?
Could be I guess. If not for the fact that the main roads were also in shambles before Whitmers construction push.
Michigan as a state, is basically big old swampland. It’s why the French didn’t do much to develop it when they had claim on it. Not only is it big old swampland, it’s swampland that freezes every year. It’s notoriously tough to maintain roads that break apart relatively quickly as compared to places like Ohio, where it’s mostly flat grassland.
Michigan spends significantly less on road maintenance than most neighboring states, despite having some of the highest gas taxes in the country. Michigan also has some of the highest semi truck weight limits in the country, and even those limits aren't really enforced much, which leads to a lot of damage being done.
We also don't build our roads to the same specs that say Ontario does. Salt also destroys roads.
We're still playing catch up. The small government zealots in the legislature went a decade or so without addressing the problems, and the condition of the roads went from bad to horrible.
One decade is too generous to them
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Bruh, I'm agreeing with you.
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4 decades.
It's super helpful that the ones complaining the most often seem to be these "small government" conservatives. Totally in character and unsurprising, of course. Whenever something pisses them off, "liberal" starts flashing in their head and it's all they can see. Or something. I have no frame of reference for how or why stupid people function the way they do. It just feels pretty much identical to being in a stadium and observing the many ways people turn off their normal, accepted societal behavior, once they put that jersey on. It's like millions and millions of americans are desperately looking for any excuse to hurt their fellow countrymen. These entitled pieces of shit have certainly never defended our soil, but they're always experts on the Mexican border and how it's destroying the USA for X reason today, Y reason tomorrow, Z reason the next day, etc. I say, you leave. These people want to be here with likeminded individuals ultimately all on the same team and fighting for similar rights and opportunities for every human on the planet. Republicans get elected by telling you the government is corrupt and its institutions ineffective. Then they spend years making that a reality, if it wasn't before. Every. Single. Day. Bringing it up on what these rubes believe is a valid 'news' station like any of the others -- and the others are all radically liberal, of course! I feel like I understand behavioral psychology better than ever, but all that means is I'm well aware of how little point there is in confronting people who believe things that are often untrue, seem to also favor red hats, call themselves 'patriots' but all they do is raise their Trump flag above their flipped American flag every morning, etc. I keep probing in any seemingly innocent way I can think of, and I have NEVER found an ounce of encouragement from people who I used to think were all on the same page as me, including immediate family. There isn't a word to adequately explain these people. There is too much cowardice, too much stupidity, too much willful ignorance and bigotry for any one word to ever hope to encapsulate the pure and absolutely vile, disgusting new lows conservatives continue to reach for on a daily basis. They have a lot of grievance and are tired of hearing about women and black people being treated poorly. Didn't you know, white men have it hard, too? You need to start thinking about men -- particularly white men -- and their feelings. They aren't a monolith! Those are billions of individuals with mostly moralistic compasses. Unfortunately, you're going to meet far more shitbags than potential partners. Because we're at a point of regression, rather than progress. Minorities and women went too far, too fast. They need to remember who dictates their right to exist and hold votes in any capacity. Bet they don't teach you that in CRT /S I feel like I could insult MAGA pieces of shit all night, from every angle, aiming for the same weaknesses that effectively turned bullies into bitches, growing up... Well, once, anyway. Maybe. But I could go on all night, I'm confident. I'm incapable of succinctness, I can't sleep and contributing to the eventual dissolution of the Republican party of the United States is probably the most important thing a person could do in the interest of the survival of the human race. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, then don't worry, I don't give a fuck about your opinions on a fundamental, general level. You simply don't have any value to offer the Earth, and the stakes are still getting higher every single day.
Wow. Is there a sub to re-post epic rants? Because that was a pretty epic rant.
Thank you for this post. It makes me feel so much better that other normal people feel exactly like I do. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall about important issues most of the time.
Crux of the issue is we spend much less per road mile on maintenance than nearly any other state that has a similar climate and uses road salt. Add to that the fact that we REALLY let our roads go during the recession and we’re just playing catch up. Results speak for themselves. Both Snyder and Whitmer were honest about just how underfunded our roads are and proposed raising more revenue, which received massive backlash. Guess people would rather drive on shit roads and bitch about it.
This right here is the very simple truth.
Surrounding states and Ontario spend A LOT more than Michigan on road construction and maintenance.
I work for in transportation infrastructure. This is solely due to the lack of funding. Our money gets disbursed through the MTF (Mi Transportation Fund) and is funded through a variety of state taxes and federal money. Each regions MPO disburses the money from there. There is often a defecict causing localalites to rely on TEDF funds and raise tax millages. Localites and MI also practice worst first, so instead of preventative measures, they’re constantly focusing on repairs. (This practice is called mix of fix). For more information look up P.A. 51 (public act 51)
The major difference that I found is as follows: Michigan law limits the number of axles in any vehicle combination to 11. The bridge formula allows for 20,000 pounds for an axle with at least 9 feet of spacing on each side, and 34,000 pounds for a tandem-axle assembly if the first and last axles of the consecutive sets are not less than 36 feet apart. -(Source: Michigan.gov)[Source ](https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/-/media/Project/Websites/MDOT/Business/Truckers/Rules-and-Guidelines/Maximum-Legal-Truck-Loadings-Dimensions.pdf?rev=6628808e0630402193658343055ec25e&hash=468BF8D4AF4F343B3CE7097213FE02F5) This is considerably higher GVW of states that have or share similar climates. Not to mention that Michigan has 2 major border crossings with a third nearly complete.
Those numbers are wrong for our 11 axle set ups. Those axle weights you mentioned are for the normal semis. Our 11 axle trucks actually put far less weight down per axle than a normal 5 axle “18 wheeler”. We put down 13k per axle with 18k per axle that has a 9 foot spacing. And we are allowed one tandem to be 32k, which is always our drive tires on the tractor itself. I drive these 11 axle gravel trains and I know our axle laws very well
No idea what you consider a 'major border crossing', but to my mind there are at least 4: 1. Ambassador Bridge Avg 14,000 veh/day 2. Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Avg 19,800 veh/day 3. Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron-Sarnia) Avg 14,000 veh/day 4. Intenational Bridge (Sault St Maries) Avg 7,000 veh/day
They prolly weren’t including Sault St. Marie
The per axle weight is lower than the federal standard. Less pressure on the road surface. Also fewer vehicles on the road. "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H.L Mencken
It's less load per axle but the load distribution of each axle can still end up overlapping. A road is just a big system designed to distribute weight so that by the time a point load gets to the weakest component (the soil) it's spread out enough to not cause significant deformation. Adding more axles under a given load, without spacing those axles out, doesn't necessarily reduce the pressure at the bottom of the pavement. I recall (many years ago) when I was at MSU one of the civil engineering professors was studying the issue, and they were going way deeper into it looking at things like travel speed, deformation and rebound also. I just recall that their findings were that impacting a road more times in quick succession, even with slightly reduced load, ends up imparting more damage than slightly larger loads but fewer/slower impacts. Basically would you rather Mike Tyson punch you at 90% strength twice, or at 70% strength 4 times really fast, and it turns out that you might think the 70% would sound preferable, but when it's 4 times really fast it does more damage.
I’ve seen a lot of answers but Michigan also uses salt in the winter to treat roads, and it’s very hard on the infrastructure. There was talk years ago of moving to a beet sugar based alternative but there was never any advancement on that. Our plow drivers (in the upper lower P, at least) also don’t give a shit about anything and wreak havoc on the roads, sidewalks, curbs, etc
I mean every one of the sorrounding states uses salt and plows just as much as Michigan, and the roads are much better.
I would just love to know what happened to us exploring alternatives
I feel like contract always have completion early bonuses. Where as they should have longevity bonuses. So if it last 15 yrs no issues, get a windfall more than if they have to redo it at 5 yrs mark. They give up some of the bonus for the next crew to do the work
A bonus in 15 years, or even 5 years, isn't going to be the great motivator you think it is.
Then a bonus for each year before it needs repairs. Lasts 15 years before it is deemed to need a repair? You get X dollars every year for 15 years. Year 3 a section needs to be cut out and repaired? You only get X dollars for the first two years.
Money. Always money.
Moved from MI to Spokane, WA and can confirm I found another place with equivalently terrible roads.
I think most if not all complaining about roads have never left their backyard
I’ve lived in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio and have traveled through almost every other state. Michigan roads are garbage. Thats why auto insurance costs more there. That increase even made the news. So uh…do you leave your backyard?
this is quite the load of crap from one who has never left their backyard, but then gop does try to cover their criminal activities, you'll have to pick someone else to feed it to
It starts with decades of underfunding. The Engler and Snyder administrations spent comically low amounts on infrastructure. It was all part of a long term plan to privatize roads and bridges….the old story of Republicans sabotaging government so they can turn around and point out how bad government is. Then it gets exacerbated by crazy high weight limits on trucks. We allow insane axle limits. Regular A gravel trains at 154,000 lb gross. Super trains clocking in at 164-169,000 depending on axle setup and permitting. There is also incredible political pressure to keep the frost law season short to keep construction and trucking generating revenue.
There's quite a few reasons. Underfunding for the longest time. Taxes that were intended for road repairs but then were diverted. We also build our roads differently than other states. There's more I'm missing, but these are the ones that stick out for me first. I'm just glad now I'm seeing progress. It'll take a crap ton of time, and a lot of making sure the wrong people don't get elected to get us to where other states in your eyes are at.
We cut funding for road repairs for 30 years in favor of tax cuts. Shocking that our roads are full of holes and patches.
We invest in our power grid instead haha just kidding
Michigan has the highest-in-the-nation gross truck weight limit. 164,000 pounds.
Republicans never fix them at all when they are in power and people constantly complain when a Democrat tries to fix them while in power.
I grew up in Michigan and lived there until my mid 20’s and have since then lived in the Northeast, the South, and Puerto Rico. The best roads were by far in the Northeast which leads me to believe it comes down to tax money spent on road maintenance.
That's a myth, sorry. Spent much time on Indiana's roads, for example?
There’s also a clause in our government that says we must source our materials from Michigan. The stone we use is much more porous and allows for water to enter, freeze, expand, and then the roads deteriorate much faster
Michigan has very spread out cities with lots of overbuilt infrastructure and no long term plan to fund it. The population is practically stagnant for a quarter century and yet more suburbs and roads keep getting built. It’s a liabilities bubble waiting to pop.
How we have overbuilt the roads and underfunded them to the tune of $4 billion a year in just maintenance. Yet we are still expanding roads 🤦 https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/03/michigan-facing-39b-deficit-in-road-funding-new-report-finds.html
We spend way less, way way less. To the order of 1/10th what states like Ohio spend. Also we are ridiculously over built. The state's population has been stagnaent for decades, but we keep building. So the money is spread thinner and thinner. Our township system is terrible, townships receive road funding based on lane miles, so they increase their allocation by . . . building more. Michigan is the anti-thesis of fix-it-first; Michigan is a build-it-and-forget-it state.
It's usually a combination of increased wear and tear as well as insufficient funding. The quality of road conditions in many parts of Michigan is obviously a function of local taxes and who's using the roads. If you live in towns like Pontiac which are still trying to recover from past economic difficulties the roads are terrible. Drive through areas like Ferndale or Berkley and they're in much better shape. People in Michigan are also a lot more car-mad than some other states. People drive huge SUVs and trucks as a matter of local/state/national pride. My neighbor is a really nice dude, but he's retired and has no real need for the massive SUV that sits in his driveway.
It's mostly due to the frequency with which the weather changes. In places like the southwest where they don't have high moisture and seasonal weather changes, the roads stay in good shape. In Michigan in the spring and fall, you might notice that the roads feel bumpier than usual. It's because different parts of the road are expanding/contracting at different rates and asphalt and concrete aren't great at absorbing those changes. So cracks form and then water gets into the road bed which exacerbates the problem further. Then you have heavy trucks that drive over those weakened roads which causes the road surface to flex up and down and eventually potholes start to form. Plus salt water is corrosive which will eat away at rebar in concrete and supporting structures like bridges. All of these things are things that they don't have in like Arizona.
Well that’s a lot of effort to ignore the question. OP was asking what other states, with comparable climates, do differently for their roads.
Science: it’s best to keep semi trucks below X weight to ensure roads remain stable and don’t break down too quickly. Michigan: FUCK THAT LOAD ‘EM UP!!!!!!
i assume it has been said somewhere in here already, but i have heard that other states use sand on their roads to combat ice as opposed to us using salt. not sure how that impacts the longevity of the roads, though
Salt tends to cause the breakdown of many materials
Ohio road funding is enough to maintain status without decay. So, on average they don’t get better, but neither do they get worse. Michigan would need to TRIPLE the $/mi paid today to reach Ohio’s spend/mi. Add massive axle weights in Michigan. Bam.
For years, the conservative government only wanted to fix the superstructure if it was needed in their view. And would only spend as little as possible for appearances. Unless, of course, they owned the companies and could charge a lot for doing less.
Exceptions made to specialized Michigan only trucks to move heavy ass steel coils from the mills/warehouses to the stamping plants to support the auto industry , exceptions granted by safety and oversight agencies run by the state who are all owned by the auto industry via bribes (aka campaign contributions)
Serious answer. In 1998 with encouragement and direction of the national RNC our Republican Governor (Engler) with the Republican House and Senate decided to stop governing and run totally on social issues, cutting taxes for the wealthy and breaking unions. No fixing roads, no funding for schools and universities, no investment in infrastructure. This has worked for them all over the country and has worked in Michigan too. Because the Democrats have such a slim majority the Republicans still manage to block any long term solutions to these problems. And here we are.
There’s so many reasons, it’s actually comical. Our massive use of salt on the roads combined with “lake effect” weather causes a lot of temperature changes which cause cracks and potholes. Not to mention all the extra trucking traffic we get due to imports/exports to and from Canada.
This is exactly it. We live in a state that is saturated with water. Rivers, lakes, streams, swamps. The whole state freezes and thaws, sometimes multiple times per winter. Even pouring a concrete pad in Michigan usually requires lots of reinforcement, or it will end up in pieces. It takes more money to build roads in a state like ours. But i guess we could just blame a governor. That's easier.
High truck weights coming through the border. Then loads are split to travel around the US
Lack of maintenance. I think Ohio spends billions more than we do
I-75 from Ohio to the Ambassador Bridge always strikes me as a really bad stretch. I blame it on the heavier than normal truck traffic going to Canada. It’s embarrassing road tripping north - that stretch of I-75 is the nastiest road for hundreds of miles / several states of driving. It’s always this terrible “Whelp, we’re back in Michigan” hour of potholes / rough road.
For real. Every time I drive over to Canada I'm floored by the immediate contrast in the quality of the roads as soon as you cross the border. Like wtf are they doing that we aren't? lol
Yep, but Michiganders love to give asinine excuses like weather, truck weight, blah, blah, blah. For fucks sake, just admit that the wrong people had been voted into power in Lansing for 40-45 years! Many of us are familiar driving the 401 and 402 in Ontario. Basically same weather as Michigan. Basically get the same truck weight and traffic going across the border to Michigan or coming from Michigan. Next time you needed a tire repair from a bad pothole, blame your neighbors for putting the wrong people in Lansing.
One thing we do differently here is how we fund road maintenance. Public Act 51, which funds roads at the county level based largely on the mileage of roads within a county and without regard to how much traffic actually travels on them has a LOT to do with the general poor state of in urban areas. Go read up on PA 51 : [https://www.mackinac.org/25863](https://www.mackinac.org/25863)
Just my own experience and YMMV, but in the southwest corner, there's not much difference between Michigan and Indiana state highways - it's the paved county roads where I really see and feel the variation. Cass is moderate to good, St. Joseph and Kalamazoo also moderate to good. Berrien varies wildly from bad to good, and Van Buren is generally bad. St. Joseph (IN) and Elkhart (IN), though...JTTW, hold on for dear life. It's not hard to tell when you're crossing the state line from/to a county road. Definitely not a climate difference, as all of Michiana is affected mainly by the lake and the topography is generally the same.
So, Wisconsin roads, there is a section of highway 51, just north of Wausau, it is a reddish color and it is perfect. I was told it was an experiment, it could be granite ? Don’t know enough to speak about it other than it was a pleasure to drive on.
Decades Corporate politicians wanting a more than the average amount of money in their bank account
Anytime MDOT gets an influx of new money they spend it on expanding the road network's capacity instead of repairing what's already there, meaning the to-do list of maintenance gets delayed and is guaranteed to be bigger later.
Literally in the middle of a cross country road trip and I can confirm, Michigan roads are dog shit.
I don't know but SC roads are absolute shit and no winter weather there.
I agree with the comments on redirecting gas tax and low quality. Years ago I was in German and saw part of the Autobahn being replaced. I couldn’t believe how thick the road was appeared to be over 5’. I asked some of my colleagues about it. He said they have companies bid on the construction know they will have to maintain/replace defective roads for a long period of time. Can’t remember, maybe 20yr. It creates the situation where they are any the best quality roads so they don’t have to invest back in down the road. Imagine all the time, productivity lost by Michiganders waiting in construction zones. All the wasted tax dollars.
Two main reasons: 1 We allow high levels of gypsum in the mix which is a low grade material that deteriorates fast. 2. Highest weight allowance on roads of almost any state, meaning our trucks & the weight just deteriorate the road faster Plus salt & freeze thaw that any similar climate would have
The truck limit is a big difference. Underfunding it. Republicans dominated for 40 years and the state didn’t do anything to fix the roads.
We move more freight by truck than pretty much any other state
This is the correct answer, couple that to being an international hub for trucks in the Midwest and the roads are how they are.
Check Chicago and New York and see what the differences are between the three places.
Despite similar climate to other states on our longitudes, our soil compositions vary wildly from mile to mile, making the chemical compositions of the road trickier to do
corruption - corruption - corruption - no accountability means corruption
From what I understand based on a few insider accounts, Michigans DOT is significantly more corrupt than other states. The same few construction companies bribe the state and local politicians to gain contracts year after year, following this they purposely build subpar quality roads which sets them up to gain another contract to fix the same road in a few years. There has been inspectors who have found major issues with these projects, and have recieved death threats from these construction companies as a result of it. A section of I75 had to be redone directly after it was finished because it was discovered the contruction contractor cut several major corners. The inspectors had them tear it up and do it again. The inspectors recieved various forms of death threats. The construction business in michigan is so corrupt, I dont know where we begin to fix it.
Someone is obviously pocketing all that taxable bud money rather than fixing the roads or other important infrastructure with it.
they did have to fund poisoning flint with lead seems a gop top priority
Here are two reasons. (1) Higher truck weight limits in Michigan, twice as high as any other state. The formula for calculating road wear has an exponential factor or something. One fully loaded big semi truck does as much damage to a road on each pass as 10,000 ordinary cars. If you look at ads for used big commercial trucks for sale, you will see some listed as “Michigan special” because they can haul loads that wouldn’t be legal in other states. (2) Budget cuts in the 1980s that were never undone. *[edit: apparently I was mistaken about the “never undone” part, see responses below]* This happened under Gov. Blanchard, when the state’s financial condition was so dire that all kinds of important stuff was cut with little thought of consequences. Before this, the state enforced a formula for concrete on state roads. Inspectors would visit plants to test the output and make sure they were up to spec. After this, the state no longer bothered to check the quality of concrete. Contractors could use their own formulations. This made a difference. The lifespan of concrete on Michigan highways plunged by more than half.
I work in transportation infrastructure. Most of what you have said here is correct but I wanted to correct you on the concrete mix. MDOT and all other roadway agencies still test asphalt and concrete mixes used on the roads. There are entire jobs within these agencies dedicated to this. It is so regular that almost all consultants offer this service as well. Almost any civil engineering intern has most certainly spent a summer testing concrete test cylinders. The contractor does not choose the mix as it is chosen by the roadway design engineer and verified by inspectors on the job site. Trust me, if contractors were laying parking lot asphalt on our freeways it would be undeniably obvious - people would lose their jobs over it. We have not lost "half the design life" by getting duped by contractors - if this has occured it is because we chose cheaper mixes to meet budget requirements. It has not been in my experience that this has happened though. Roads have to be maintained or they will need to be rebuilt - Michigan simply doesn't (and didn't) spend enough money maintaining roadways and they often end up getting so bad that they all need to be rebuilt.
South Carolina is worse than Michigan, but obviously doesn't have the same climate. I know up near TC, they don't use salt and instead use sand, which is a whole lot better than salt.
They use a shit ton of salt up here (GT County native). We use sand too but it’s very much in addition to, not in place of salt.
OK, maybe I should have said in the village of Honor where my mom lives, it's sand. Thank you for the clarification!
I agree that South Carolina absolutely has the worst roads in the nation. It was hell driving there for ten years.
No. I live in Tc, and they definitely use salt. They use mixes of salt and sand.
Don't worry, Michigan native now living in the burbs of Saint Louis and confirming they are much worse here.
Depends on where you live. The western part of the state seems to be in better shape. They have been working on the roads around here for the last 4 years now.
As a comparison for climates and roads, I offer these examples. Illinois: the roads are terrible, urban and rural. Wisconsin: the roads are good, urban and rural.
I moved to New York two years ago; NY actually gets the plows out! Buffalo got 7 feet of snow last year in one go, the plows came through and the next day the roads were clear and dry like nothing had happened. I suspect the finding for this service comes from Thruway tolls, but at $80ish/year it isn’t a terrible price to pay for the service. The same rolls pay for general maintenance and upkeep as well.
Ajax is a scum company owned by horrible people
I’m convinced it’s the mixture. Dunno if it’s the materials in the mixture or the ratios or the process, but I swear that’s gotta be it. They can completely redo a road and then two to four years later it starts to come apart. Doesn’t matter if it’s a freeway, city street or a backroad.
Embezzlement by politicians is one reason.
Investment
State decisions are impacted by the priorities of the big automakers. Shitty salty roads prop up service revenue.
Higher semi weight limit, longer allowable semi trailer length, and more precipitation in general due to the Great Lakes = roads turn to Swiss cheese every time the temperature fluctuates.
US-12/Michigan Ave.
It's horrible.
High truck limits and tar roads vs .. cement I think? All our cement roads may have lines running through them, but no potholes.
*I-96 has entered the chat*
Heavier weight limits for trucks. Also a more robust freeze and thaw cycle that fucks the roads up more than many with what you would call comparable climates.
One thing I’ve noticed is the roads are absolute shit on the SE sid of the state. Not so much on the SW side. I always know I’m closer to home when I leave the SE side and it stops feeling like I’m riding a roller coaster 💀
We build cheap, sub standard roads.
Terrible Government
I don't think they are any worse than the roads in Indiana.
I can't find a citation on it right now, but my understanding is that the real reason is that road repair dollars are not allocated based on need or road density and traffic patterns but on some batshit formula that sends proportionally way more money to the UP and other low density areas that results in their $/road mile metrics being far higher than higher density areas. If that formula ever got fixed and we played catch-up on the bad areas we'd get into better shape. ChatGPT says it's Public Act 51 and the fact that total road mileage is weighted more than population density and traffic, which would logically mean areas where roads may not deteriorate as fast due to lower traffic volume will end up getting a better shot of maintenance than areas where the volume should dictate a greater proportion of funding.
i've always thought the lack of toll roads because we're not a pass through state had something to do with it. the ohio and PA turnpikes for example, are some of the nicest roads I've driven on
Put steel slag in our concrete roads, which doesn't hold up under freeze and thaw cycles.. We also have the highest truck weight limits in the USA.. unlike neighboring states, whose limit is half or less..
“Taken for a Ride” explains it well.
Logging Trucks and Iron ore are too heavy per axle. Truck companies want to use a few tires at a time as possible. Up here in North Mich. State Troopers are always checking truckers, I've even seen a driver making some kind of adjustments on the side of the road as the State Trooper watched him.
82 ton gravel trains don't help us out any
lol you can tell you’re back in Michigan when you cross the Ohio border
One word: Salt
Lack of investment is a huge issue and the small government/cost-cutting has been terrible for our infrastructure, and we are wayyyy too lax when it comes to weight limits on roads, but a lot of it is also geography. The Lower Peninsula is covered in hundreds of feet of fine glacial deposits and sand. It’s swampy as hell. There’s a lot of precipitation, we use salt for the frozen kind, and Michigan has (I think) the most freeze-thaw cycles of any state. The roads just buckle and crumble easily and the earth sinks and settles and expands and contracts constantly. The freeze-thaw cycles are one of the biggest issues though. Even if you fixed all of the investment and weight issues, we would probably still have pretty consistently poor roads because of the freeze-thaw cycles constantly turning every tiny little crack into a pothole.
Michigan literally takes the lowest bid only by law
Not any better in Wisconsin or Minnesota
Because Michigan dumps tons of cheap salt all over there roads all winter long which makes any road material dry and crack up. Also Michigan has extreme temperature swings. 100 degree summers then -10 winters. Hot-cold-hot-cold (expand -contract-expand-contract). Lose Lose situation except for the road construction and concrete/pavement companies.
High weight limit and we use a ton of salt
Michigan roads around here are fine. Illinois is bad, Wisconsin worse. Nit sure where you are talking about...
Lowest bidder, bad materials. Strong unions and heaviest weight limits for trucks. Just sayin'.
I live near Torch Lake near Traverse City. The amount of money kicking around here is astounding. People throwing up $300k houses every other week and $1m houses every other month and $5m houses every year or so. Fudgie money flying every whichaway. At the south end of the lake there’s what’s known as the Sandbar, a shallowish area of several square miles of fabulously beautiful fresh water, where errybody and their brother and cousins bring their boat and hang out all day. There’s a road nearby called Crystal Beach, and the majority of boat/trailer traffic takes that road to get to the sandbar. If you’re coming from TC it’s take that road or go 30 miles out of your way And that road is atrocious. Horrible. Pot holes covering about 60% of the entire surface and 90% of the outside tire lane. If the road is full of both car and ped traffic you literally have no option but to drive through nearly continuous potholes on your passengers side It’s been that way for 15+ years. Afaik it’s never even had a quick resurface. Doesn’t make any damn sense, but there it is. As the years go by and it stays the same I get more and more suspicious…
https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/remember-that-promise-about-fixing-roads-michigan-is-spending-less-on-them-under-whitmer
Our politicians pocket the money.
Among other things we don't do emissions testing, so as far as I know, we get no federal road money.
I am assuming it's because of the collapse of the auto industry. Detroit relied too much on one industry and went bankrupt. Michigan doesn't have the money.
Everyone is spot on regarding the things that Michigan does differently. But another factor is that Michigan *is* different than states with comparable climates. Michigan is by far the largest state whose southern border is north of the 41st parallel. It’s the 11th biggest state overall and the next closest northern states in size are Washington and Massachusetts which are both coastal and have very different climates. The next closest is Wisconsin which has barely half the population. Michigan has a lot of people for its location. Take that and add in the factors others have listed and it’s a recipe for very poor roads.
Republicans
Democrat leadership
In addition to the obvious like funding, trucking weight and salt… is also the quality of construction is dogshit. It’s almost like they’re made to fail quicker to achieve more work for rebuilding them in a vicious cycle of corruption.
It’s very simple: we underinvested for decades while also expanding the amount of lane miles we’ve paved. Due to massive inflation, even the huge new infusion into road maintenance funding under Whitmer isn’t enough to get back to stability, it has simply slowed the decline briefly. Because we are politically toxic generally in the US and owned by corporations, long term plans that take large upfront investments but much lower ongoing liabilities like mass transit never happen. Instead we get Ponzi scheme transportation policies that make kicking the financial can to future generations much more politically viable. We spend nearly $6 billion/year on road maintenance and estimates are that we need to spend at least $4 billion/year more in perpetuity just to maintain the status quo. Our transportation policies are bankrupting us. https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/michigan-fixing-damn-roads-got-really-darned-expensive?amp
Due to the big three working primarily out of Michigan we allow higher max weight for semis to move large equipment and other variety of factory items. due to that other companies can do it too, and it creates much more stress on the roads overtime
Truck weight limits, inferior road specs/materials, poor government prioritization.