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How good are American roads?

We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.

Data on US road quality is provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) at the national, state, and city level. While the IRI is commonly used by countries around the world to measure road quality, I had a very hard time finding any international datasets comparable to FHWA data. They found that European roads were much higher quality, noting that “the serious deterioration that exists on US highways and streets was virtually never seen in Europe,” likely because damage was repaired much sooner.

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