Shocker: Somebody says something good about Boston roads
By adamg - Wed, 03/12/2008 - 9:15pm.
TRIP, some transportation research group, says Boston has some of the best big-city pavement in the country. Their proof is in this table, which found 76% of Boston's roads were in "good" condition. Compare to New York, where 49% of the roads were "poor" (and 30% "mediocre") and Philadelphia (37% "poor" and 36% "mediocre"). And then there's Car Central, a.k.a., Los Angeles, where the group says 65% of all roads are in "poor" shape and 26% mediocre. All that adds up to extra costs for car repairs.
The report only looks at the condition of the pavement, however, not tunnels or bridges.
| 
| 
Solutions
This is why, in every city I've ever lived in, I've always driven Jeeps with big ol' fat tires.
Criteria?
Their criteria for grading the roads isn't included. They also don't have anywhere that they explain how or when they collected the data. This could have been a do-it-yourself survey and information from Cambridge and Brookline might have been included (boosting the numbers since they have better roads in general compared to Boston proper). It just doesn't say, so how can we trust the study?
Having driven in Baltimore daily as recent as 7 years ago and driven in Boston daily shortly thereafter until now, how Boston can end up on the complete opposite, and positive, end of the scale is baffling. I never had a problem with Baltimore street conditions at any time of year and any roadwork was patched competently to prevent future problems. Didn't Menino have to issue a recent moratorium on utility work under the streets because the potholes that would result from poor patching became a huge issue to road conditions? I also know that many Boston storm grates are out-dated in shape/form and often don't meet the grade of the road at all (yet are well within a lane of travel causing tons of damage to suspensions and axles).
This study just doesn't join with the reality of the streets that I've driven on in both cities.
disbelief
This has got to be some kind of joke, right? I'd say 76% of the roads I've driven on are in "poor" condition, not "good", and the remaining 24% would be "mediocre" at best.