[borski]

Dno. The roads here are way better than other places with lower taxes, it’s beautiful, the air and water are clean, and so on.

Everywhere has plenty of things to complain about. I’d like to spend less in taxes, always.

But at least it does feel, objectively, like we live in a mostly lovely place that actually does protect employees, have access to great healthcare, great roads, great charging infrastructure (relative to the rest of the US) and so on.

[ensignavenger]

Anecdotal, but I have driven across a majority of US states, from Florida to Alaska (and also, on both the East and West sides of Canada) and haven't noticed any strong correlation between the quality of the roads and how high a states taxes are.

[smokeydoe]

Did you drive between Texas - Louisiana? It is a massive difference almost immediately. You go from 55mph top speed limit with many potholes in LA to smooth 75mph Texas roads. Texas roads are much better and I have heard the same opinion many times from people making that drive. Louisiana makes their roads cheaper by making them much more thin, and they don’t get repaired often in rural areas.

[simfree]

Is that why Texas property taxes are eye wateringly high?

[turquoisevar]

That might be part of it, but far and away the main reason for that is to offset the state’s ability to tout about having no income tax.

There’s a list floating around by some personal finance blog that ranks the states based on effective tax rate across most taxes citizens are subject to and Texas consistently ends up remarkably high on that list due to the other taxes being relatively high.

Texas is essentially the personification of a low sticker price with hidden fees (e.g., “starts at $0”).

[jmknoll]

There's probably a lot of noise in the data. Off the top of my head, climate (whether roads are exposed to freeze-thaw cycles) and population density/clustering (how many miles of road do you need to maintain per person), are probably more strongly correlated with quality than taxation levels.

[seanmcdirmid]

Since you mentioned Florida, the roads go from good to bad as soon as you cross the border into Alabama, which is a really interesting experience on the interstate. But yes, the roads are bad in Deep South states, although the taxes aren’t really that low either (just people don’t make much money to get much out of them).

[erickhill]

Except in Texas.

For a state that often bemoans the federal government and its out of control spending, Texas takes an impressive amount of funds and puts it into a very high-quality and modern interstate system.

Texas will receive over $27 billion (with a B) over the next ~5 years in federal funding for highways and bridges alone. $10 billion was allocated across 2022-2023. Many of their roads are quite nice and only going to improve. Thanks, Uncle Sam!

[CydeWeys]

Texas has high property taxes. It's actually not a low tax state as measured by overall tax burden. Texas is also very proud of its massive, well-resourced public schools (and their football teams!), and pours a lot of tax revenue into them.

[lobocinza]

Worse than California?

[seanmcdirmid]

It depends on your income since income taxation in California is extremely graduated. If you make less than $60-70k, you’ll pay less in CA, otherwise you’ll do better in TX.

[reaperducer]

Since you mentioned Florida, the roads go from good to bad as soon as you cross the border into Alabama

Same thing happens with California/Nevada.

I-15 is wide, flat, beautiful and flawless on the Nevada side. As soon as you hit California, it's like a rural county road with no maintenance.

[seanmcdirmid]

I don’t notice much going between the two on I-80, well except you go from pretty straight desert roads into a freaking mountain range. Are mountains involved in the border at I-15 also?

California is rated poorly on roads on average because they have a lot of rural/mountainous terrain to cover. In the cities where most people live, the roads are actually pretty good.

[lowbloodsugar]

I’ve driven track cars with bone shaking suspension from LA to Vegas and honestly don’t recall any difference.

[reaperducer]

I’ve driven track cars with bone shaking suspension from LA to Vegas and honestly don’t recall any difference.

Funny, because it's in the Las Vegas newspapers every six months or so how the mayor of Las Vegas and the governor of Nevada are always begging California to upgrade its side of I-15.

Almost every month there are 14-hour traffic jams on Sunday night as the SoCal crowd scurries home only to hit the bottleneck at the California border where I-15 goes from six lanes to four, then twists its way through the mountains.

I've driven it many dozens of times in the last ten years, and it's well known among people who live in Nevada.

[lowbloodsugar]

Maybe Nevada could provide the money for it? Building roads on flat ground is easier than a freeway through the mountains is it not? And the primary beneficiary of the road is Vegas? Why would I want California taxes to subsidize Vegas gamblers? A road that is totally fine except Sunday night? Think about the two bits of road you are comparing: they are not representative.

[wombatpm]

Cross from IL to WI on 94. The toll road ends and the reads are so much better. Of course WI will pull over any speeder with out of state plates. They even take credit cards to pay your fine on the spot.

[mandeepj]

> But yes, the roads are bad in Deep South states

Interesting! Quite contrary from the prevailing wisdom - snow and salt destroy the roads. Maybe they don’t make them well to begin with.

[seanmcdirmid]

It’s all the water and the clay they are built on, Florida just spends to get around it.

[gunapologist99]

Of course, Florida and Texas both have zero personal income tax.

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in Washington, so I’m not sure what the big deal of that is.

[jrockway]

I grew up in the suburbs. My town had pretty much no commercial base. The next town over had a huge mall. They had much better roads, a much better library, a sports complex, a swimming pool complex, the list goes on. It was obvious to a 10 year old how much of a difference the tax base made.

Of course, we just got a library card in their district and I enjoyed the use of the nicer library as well. But still.

[borski]

In my experience, it correlates fairly well, with Florida being the notable exception. I have no idea why their roads are so good.

[c-linkage]

Tourism.

[lettergram]

Most of what you’re driving on could be federal highways.

I’m in the same boat, have driven just about everywhere and I haven’t seen any major correlation.

[alienthrowaway]

I noticed an immediate degradation in surface quality on the interstate when I crossed into Alabama. Aren't the states responsible for upkeep using federal dollars? Some states are better than others at this.

[simfree]

Initial roadway construction is using primarily federal dollars, but long-term maintenance is usually primarily funded by the state or local municipality.

[SoftTalker]

It's because they don't have winter. Winter, freezing/thawing, and salt is what destroys roads.

[asadotzler]

Tell that to Mississippi which has s*t roads and no winter freezing/thawing or salt to consider. Broke ass red states can barely afford to keep their roads passable for the most part. There are a couple of exceptions where the states are willing to starve their children to keep the roads up, but most red states fail at both feeding kids and maintaining roads. If it wasn't for the cash infusion from the well off blue states, the red states would literally be third world.

[borski]

Tell that to Tahoe or any of the many mountainous regions of CA. :)

[vondur]

Roads in California are good? We must live in different states.

[sushid]

It truly depends within CA. San Diego or suburbs of LA? It's pristine. Bay Area? The roads flood with the slightest bit of rain and have potholes the size of a basketball.

[borski]

Where are you from? To be fair, I mean relative to other states. Not that they’re perfect.

[wolverine876]

Don't forget the world-class higher education system, with the two of the top universities in the world.

[borski]

Oh yeah, and spectacular public schooling - the state schools are top notch, as are many of the lower education public schools.

[geraldwhen]

LA county school system is one of the worst in the nation and it costs nearly the most.

[borski]

Fair point. I don’t live in LA and was not aware of the school issues there.

But by and large, CA does have great public school, and top-tier public universities.

[nullc]

My experience is that the Florida roads are significantly better than the roads in the bay area. And Florida has no income tax and lower sales taxes than California.

[borski]

I mentioned Florida as the notable outlier. They have a lot worse other things, but I agree the roads in FL are great.

[Tostino]

They make up their tax revenue in other ways.

[borkt]

What part of the state are you in with good roads? Sonoma county here, miserable roads

[borski]

Bay Area, but I’m from NYC, so my standard for “bad road” is relatively high - there are a lot of potholes right now from the rain, but in general they get fixed quickly, the roads are wide and many-lanes, and generally don’t do insane things like loop back on themselves or anything like that.

[kelnos]

I disagree with this. I live in SF and the roads range from terrible to just-ok. And not just in the city; US-101 is just kinda ok (despite vaguely-regular maintenance), and many local roads I see in nearby smaller towns and cities (South SF, Daly City, Belmont, San Mateo) are -- at best -- just ok. Similar situation when I drive north toward Sonoma.

A major issue in SF proper is that crews are constantly digging up parts of roads to work on pipes or whatever, and then patch them in a haphazard, crappy way. Roads get fully resurfaced rarely. As an example, there's a super nasty patched and re-patched and re-patched and re-patched section of 18th St (between Minnesota and Tennessee) that has been a nightmare for at least 4 years now.

A section of Tennessee between 18th and 19th was resurfaced about a year ago (in part because there was building construction along the road that did heavy damage), but just this past week they were digging up a large section in the center of the road to do some work underneath, and when they patched it up, they as usual did a crap job, so the road sucks again.

I grew up in New Jersey (80s) and Maryland (90s), and the roads were much better maintained in both of those places, Maryland especially.

[borski]

I agree SF has shit roads. I do not find that to be the case almost anywhere else in CA.

I’ll put it this way too: while I’m mindful of potholes, generally, I have yet to have a single issue popping any of my 21” thin sidewall summer tires on my >5500lb EV.

My counterparts in the South have popped between 2 and 10 depending on who you ask. The answer each time is: hit a pothole.

Some of that’s driving. Some of it is also just the roads. They’re far from perfect. But they’re better than most other states.

[kelnos]

> The roads here are way better than other places with lower taxes

I live in San Francisco and absolutely disagree with this. The roads are garbage. And lest we think that's just a city thing, whenever I leave the city and drive out on local and state roads they range from garbage to ok-ish.

My family moved to Maryland when I was a teenager, and the roads there were pristine (90s, not sure about nowadays). It felt like some section of some road or highway near me was always being resurfaced.