Which County has the Worst Roads in the State?

[XLFD]

The Michigan Transportation Asset Management Council (MTAMC) recently released its annual report rating the surface quality of roads that are eligible for federal aid, and as has been the case for many years prior, the results are not great. Forty-one percent of all roads were rated 'poor,' last year, the highest amount in that category in the last 10 years.

Some counties in our area are overachievers as it pertains to poor road conditions, and three cracked the top seven in this report.  One might rationalize the poor showing as the impact of getting more lake-effect precipitation than more inland areas, requiring more plowing or some other rationale.  But this would not explain why several counties that get a lot more lake effect snow off Lake Superior finish among the top 20 counties of the state's best road conditions.

For those who believe the Ludington Torch's home county of Mason should be at the top of the list, there's some good news: it wasn't in the lowest 20 percent of Michigan's 83 counties.  But they were at the head of the next-worst 20 percent of counties, which put them in as #17 among all counties, and among the 18 counties to have over 50% of their roads rated as 'poor':

The next local county weighing in at #7 is really not too surprising for me.  Back a few decades ago, I could always tell when I crossed the Oceana County line into Newaygo County just by the difference in road quality.  Seems like they haven't got much better:

And what would a "Michigan's worst county" list be without our neighbor to the east being at or near the top of the field (deservedly or not).  They finish behind four other counties, so they must be doing something right:

Who is the nearby county at the top of the worst road conditions list?  Oceana?  Muskegon?  Benzie?  Nope, these lakeside counties have only between 40-50% of their roads in poor condition.  Nestled among all those on the lake is the one county in the state that has over 2/3 of all of its roads being rated as 'poor'.  Our neighbor to the north:

Why the poor showing for Manistee, whose neighbors to their north in coastal Leelanau County have less than half of that rate?  One would have to surmise it has something to do with the unaccountability and corruption among its county and city officials, as I know their people are flustered with their roadways and their administration officials.  

I experienced it firsthand when I asked for public records concerning the shooting of Manistee resident Lee Pat Milks two years ago.  They wouldn't give me even redacted records when they had already revealed over twenty items to the public in press releases that would have been found on the police report requested. 

I lost my appeal of that City of Manistee decision in a County of Manistee courthouse that featured court officials working around court rules and making up their own on the way when an unassigned, retired judge made a ruling that said the records were exempt for specious, created reasons, without even looking through those records.  I recently was granted a remand to correct that omission by the Michigan Court of Appeals, but I don't see me ever getting any sort of justice in a court that flagrantly violated so many rules in the two times I have had the annoyance of using their facility to get public records and failed, regardless of what is chiseled in law.

When the city and its county can collude that much to keep public records from being reviewed by the public, it comes as no surprise that the public is poorly served in every public capacity, including road repair.

For more data on county road conditions, see the article and interactive map here.

For more data on city road conditions, see the article and interactive database here.

[shinblind]

People piss and moan

about potholes same one's who

hate on orange barrels.

[shinblind]

What I would really like to see is a county comparison of the effectiveness of snow removal on major roads after a weekend storm.

[Willy]

It would seem to me that comparing rural counties can be tricky because it would depend on how many roads are dirt and how many are paved. Also are dirt roads and paved rated the same. Potholes on pavement and washboard dirt roads are 2 different animals. I would think that comparing cities would make more sense since most city streets are paved. I think the comparison between Ludington and Manistee is quite telling. The city of Manistee has substantially better streets than Ludington. Which does not say a lot for Ludington.

Manistee

Ludington

[XLFD]

They don't say as much in the county road article, but in the city road article, they make it clear:  "Road agencies report on the condition of all paved federal-aid roads over the course of two years." 

Therefore, even though rural counties on average have more unpaved roads, these aren't figured into the mix, so you are not comparing apples and oranges.  There may be some subjectivity in the method of rating roads, since I doubt only one person rates all roads in the state, and there may possibly be different sets of seemingly objective standards for different reviewers.  It could explain, for example, why large portions of the U.P. rate so well, while other areas have lower scores.

[Willy]

Below is a photo I took while touring Florida some years ago. I call it the quilted road. There is not even a square inch of of the road that does not have a patch. Of course this road is located in an isolated and rural area.