NY state actually maintains its roads pretty well. For a snow belt state they by and large have the best infrastructure with wide shoulders consistently used to minimize damage from plows and heaving. Poorer counties and large cities are less consistently good but the majority of the state's roads are nice. Compared to midwest concrete abominations that are allowed to deteriorate into crumbled messes 20 years past their design life I'll take the continuously improved NY asphalt.

Water doesn't need to freeze to destroy asphalt. Water soaks into the asphalt like a sponge and when vehicles drive over it, cracks form. Those cracks then fill with water and the process repeats.

The best roads are probably those in the desert.

Except for Mississippi.

You'd think that but in FL at least, there is ~6 potholes on my route to work every day that have been left there for months.