For a seat-of-the-pants introduction to America's highway misery, try rattling down the joint-jangling Southwest Freeway in the shadow of the Washington Monument. On this long-neglected strip of pavement, a washboard ripple effect experts call rutting jiggles the front wheels into a dervish dance. Farther along in a newly rebuilt section, potholes already lurk, like so many blacktop booby traps.
America's road system is a marvel and a mess. With 3.9 million miles of highways and roads, many of them built in the asphalt rush of the 1950s, it is by far the world's biggest system. Ninety percent of all U.S. travel occurs on highways, and three-quarters of all domestic goods are shipped by road. No stretches are busier than the 1.2 million miles of interstate and other major highways. And yet, despite the $28 billion spent each year on maintenance and construction, the Federal Highway Administration admits that 52% of these thoroughfares are in miserable condition. Some are rated "low fair," meaning rutted, cracked and sometimes "unfit for high-speed travel." Others are "poor," meaning they have excessive bumps, depressions and potholes that "provide an uncomfortable ride." Roads like this contribute to congestion and accidents, which the government says cost the country $120 billion a year -- and untold lives.
Highways in rotten condition are scattered across the nation. I-35 south of Kansas City, Kans., is known as a deathtrap for shock absorbers, while the pockmarked I-5 south of Portland, Ore., and I-20 in Louisiana are renowned for testing drivers' nerves and fannies.
Highway experts often blame such conditions on the unexpectedly heavy pounding delivered by American traffic, especially from behemoth 18-wheelers. Many U.S. roadways carry three or even four times their design weights. "Nobody in their wildest imagination predicted these load factors," says federal highway administrator Thomas Larson.
But such excuses won't fly in Europe, where miles of smooth-riding, durable autobahns and auto routes put American roadways to shame. European highways actually carry more traffic and considerably heavier truck weights than U.S. roads, yet they are smoother and far sturdier. European highways are designed by their builders to last 40 years; the projected life of American roads is half as long.
Why has the world's highway Goliath become the superpower of potholes? A major reason is that in its haste, America built on the cheap. Across the nation, state and local governments have tended to award competitive contracts to the lowest bidder, often meaning they got the shoddiest materials and the sloppiest work. In addition, the Federal Government has encouraged neglect by subsidizing new construction or major restructuring at 90 cents to the dollar but awarding no subsidies for maintenance work. One expert likens it to not reimbursing drivers for the cost of changing oil in their cars while paying 90% of the price of a valve job. "The attitude was the faster it crumbles, the faster we'll get brand-new," says New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a stalwart highway watcher. Moreover, maintenance is unglamorous. "Nobody ever had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for fixing cracks," notes Moynihan.