The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (or AASHTO) came out with a report called Rough Roads which details among many things, a state-by-state analysis of America’s highway conditions and how much  car drivers pay annually for car repairs related to road problems.

Truth be told, I thought Las Vegas was going to be up there. What with all the contruction I see, I naturally assumed there must road problems due to the extreme summer heat, right? But here’s a comparison of pavement conditions between L.A. and L.V. from 2007:

City                Poor          Mediocre          Fair          Good
Las Vegas     10%           26%                   19%            46%
Los Angeles  64%          28%                    5%              3%

Hmmm. Why are we spending billions dollars again on highway and road improvements? By the looks of it, there’s no real emergency, yet the roads near my brother’s house have been ripped up since winter break. Furthermore, Angelenos spend $700 a year on repairs due to bad roads where as Las Vegans pay $246, way below the national average.

To reiterate: Las Vegas is spending four times more on just the I-15 alone than on the combined bus rapid transit projects over the next 20 years.

Just to give you an idea, here is an overlay of RTC’s own Las Vegas Area Constructions map with my map that I created. The solid light blue lines represent public transit projects.

View Mass Transit versus Highway Construction in a larger map

Related posts:

1. Las Vegas Transit Projects
2. UNLV Civil Engineering Doesn’t Know How to Solve Vegas Transit Problems
3. Bike the only way you can in Vegas- with a police escort
4. Three reasons we don’t understand traffic