This week the Los Angeles City Council received approval to place a ½-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot, the intent being to raise $4.5 billion for repairs to the city’s crumbling streets and sidewalks. Now, I am fully on board with infrastructure improvements, I’m just not sure about paying for them through an already too-high regressive tax. I’ll leave that debate to others however, after all you didn’t come here for the political discourse, now did you?

Still, that got me thinking about the state of our roads and highways – actually about their generally poor state in my area – and I wondered if it was something that just added to the sucks to be me part of life, or if you were feeling my pain as well. In my immediate neighborhood there is a street that was so worn out that you might think that the Conestoga wagons still plied its many ruts and potholes. It took the people living on that street going to the local news media and complaining to them for the city to finally repave the 3-mile stretch. Of course in my town that squeaky wheel getting the oil meant that a street somewhere else was staying bone dry and still full of ruts and holes.

But is that how it is everywhere? I’d like to take a survey here and see how things are on a global scale. I’m assuming that you all live in first-world regions, and so without further ado, how are the roads where you live? Let us know, and also tell us where you are. 

Image source: Phl17