Reader’s Digest had an interesting ranking of the Best, Worst and Deadliest Roads in the nation. From the rankings, WI came out #2 in the Best Roads category and #37 in the deadliest roads category. Kudos to the DOT, Democratic Governor Doyle and people of Wisconsin on these results.
Reader’s Digest used a weight of the following factors to generate these rankings – bridge conditions, highway conditions, congestion and safety. You can see their full methodology here.
This is interesting information. Thanks. I’m surprised to see Montana on the top of the list for some reason.
Clearly the folks from Reader’s Digest didn’t visit SE Wisconsin, because we’ve got a bunch of roads that are in really crappy shape. Have any of you ever driven on south 13th Street between College and Rawson? That could be quite possibly the worst road I’ve ever driven on, to the point that I think a gravel road would be better.
Kudos to Jim Doyle?! Yeah I guess some Readers Digest ranking justifies raiding the transporation fund.
Thanks for the comments. I’ve seen some pretty bad roads in WI, but also have had the pleasure of driving in many other states like AR, MO, OK, IL, IA, TN, etc. where I’ve found some pretty bad roads too.
Can you imagine how bad the roads must be in the 48 states lower than Wisconsin on the list??
We must be talking about dirt roads.
With coming high speed rail, will our roads (and ranking):
A. improve
B. get worse
C. no effect
Please explain your answer.
It’s not high speed rail…it’s not any faster than the steam powered and later diesel electric Milwaukee Road passenger trains of the 1950s and 1960s. To use the same term as the Chinese, French and Japanese 200+ mph high speed trains is laughable.
the trains will have little to do with the quality of the highways themselves…with congestion maybe…but at the present rate of deferred infrastructure maintenance we may never again be able to afford quality roads and highways.
Regarding bridges, congestion and safety, a lot of the credit should probably go to Tommy!’s road-building binge. He paved a lot of the north woods, in the names of tourism and economic development (and probably influenced by massive political contributions by the roadbuilders). That transportation fund that Doyle raided was pork intended for those same roadbuilders.
So therefore it was justifiably raided? Come on. Drivers paid into that fund through the gas tax specifically to go to road projects. Doyle could have saved the money or used it on more worthy projects if he didn’t want to spend it on the pork projects that you claim.
No, the highway fund should not be used to balance the budget or anything but highway infrastructure.
Interesting tidbit in the Capital Times Today “Our local road system has historically been one of the best in the country says Richard Stadelman, executive director of the Wisconsin Towns Association. ….Wisconsin towns own and maintain 61,900 miles of roads, some two thirds of all the roads in the state.”
Well Wisconsin roads are one step below the old Indian Trails