Title: Infrastructure Spending by State
Headings: Infrastructure Spending by State
The Balance SMB Industries
Infrastructure Spending by State
Best State Infrastructure
1. Nevada
2. Florida
3. Georgia
4. Minnesota
5. Kansas
Worst State Infrastructure
1. Rhode Island
2. Alaska
3. Hawaii
4. West Virginia
5. California
What Are Patterns in Infrastructure Condition?
Do States that Spend More Have Better Infrastructure?
Rural and Urban Roads
The Importance of Infrastructure

Content: Anyone who has ever braved some of the highways in Southern California knows that they are very congested with traffic. In other words, not all, say ten-mile stretches of highway are equal—one in California may service (as just a ballpark guess) dozens of thousands of cars in a day, while one in Kansas may be rolled upon by barely a hundred. Areas that have a throng of people using their roads will run into more problems with road conditions than lighter traffic areas. It may be the case that volume of use of roads is a bigger factor in their condition that conditions like freezing and thawing or rocks and mud wearing away at the concrete. Rural and Urban Roads
The discrepancy between roads in densely and less densely populated areas can account for why spending more doesn’t necessarily lead to the best roads, or that spending less doesn’t mean the worst roads. To use Michigan as one example, funds are doled out to the various county road commissions. One big factor as to how much money each county gets is the number of miles of road the county has. Well, rural areas have those long, lonely stretches of roads, while more urban counties will have fewer roads by the mile, with many homes and businesses in a small area. That works to the advantage of rural counties, which in Michigan receive $257.53 for roads per person, to the $147.35 for urban counties. Getting back to the idea of how many vehicles travel on roads, MDOT (Michigan Department of Transportation) research reveals that a large, heavy truck (like a semi-trailer) does less damage than two lighter trucks.