MAPPED: The sorry state of America's roads
- Infrastructure remains a major topic of debate in Washington, DC and across the country.
- Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk circulated a map illustrating how road quality varies across the 50 states.
Infrastructure remains a contentious topic in American discourse. Large swaths of the nation's roads, airports, power and water systems, and public transit facilities are in a sad state of disrepair, and the political debate over how to go about addressing the problem is a central theme in Washington.
One of the most visible parts of the United States' infrastructure - the quality of the roads Americans drive on every day - varies widely across the country.
Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk circulated a map showing road quality in each US state, based on U.S. News' ranking of states' road infrastructure. The darker states had a higher proportion of major roads in poor condition in 2016:
As Sløk pointed out, Northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts fared poorly in the ranking. U.S. News noted that the proportion of poor quality roads ranged from 4% in Georgia to around half in California and Rhode Island.