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Comment by ensignavenger | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal, but I have driven across a majority of US states, from Florida to Alaska (and also, on both the East and West sides of Canada) and haven't noticed any strong correlation between the quality of the roads and how high a states taxes are.

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Did you drive between Texas - Louisiana? It is a massive difference almost immediately. You go from 55mph top speed limit with many potholes in LA to smooth 75mph Texas roads. Texas roads are much better and I have heard the same opinion many times from people making that drive. Louisiana makes their roads cheaper by making them much more thin, and they don’t get repaired often in rural areas.

Is that why Texas property taxes are eye wateringly high?

That might be part of it, but far and away the main reason for that is to offset the state’s ability to tout about having no income tax.

There’s a list floating around by some personal finance blog that ranks the states based on effective tax rate across most taxes citizens are subject to and Texas consistently ends up remarkably high on that list due to the other taxes being relatively high.

Texas is essentially the personification of a low sticker price with hidden fees (e.g., “starts at $0”).

There's probably a lot of noise in the data. Off the top of my head, climate (whether roads are exposed to freeze-thaw cycles) and population density/clustering (how many miles of road do you need to maintain per person), are probably more strongly correlated with quality than taxation levels.

Since you mentioned Florida, the roads go from good to bad as soon as you cross the border into Alabama, which is a really interesting experience on the interstate. But yes, the roads are bad in Deep South states, although the taxes aren’t really that low either (just people don’t make much money to get much out of them).

> But yes, the roads are bad in Deep South states

Interesting! Quite contrary from the prevailing wisdom - snow and salt destroy the roads. Maybe they don’t make them well to begin with.

It’s all the water and the clay they are built on, Florida just spends to get around it.

Since you mentioned Florida, the roads go from good to bad as soon as you cross the border into Alabama

Same thing happens with California/Nevada.

I-15 is wide, flat, beautiful and flawless on the Nevada side. As soon as you hit California, it's like a rural county road with no maintenance.

I’ve driven track cars with bone shaking suspension from LA to Vegas and honestly don’t recall any difference.

I’ve driven track cars with bone shaking suspension from LA to Vegas and honestly don’t recall any difference.

Funny, because it's in the Las Vegas newspapers every six months or so how the mayor of Las Vegas and the governor of Nevada are always begging California to upgrade its side of I-15.

Almost every month there are 14-hour traffic jams on Sunday night as the SoCal crowd scurries home only to hit the bottleneck at the California border where I-15 goes from six lanes to four, then twists its way through the mountains.

I've driven it many dozens of times in the last ten years, and it's well known among people who live in Nevada.

Maybe Nevada could provide the money for it? Building roads on flat ground is easier than a freeway through the mountains is it not? And the primary beneficiary of the road is Vegas? Why would I want California taxes to subsidize Vegas gamblers? A road that is totally fine except Sunday night? Think about the two bits of road you are comparing: they are not representative.

I don’t notice much going between the two on I-80, well except you go from pretty straight desert roads into a freaking mountain range. Are mountains involved in the border at I-15 also?

California is rated poorly on roads on average because they have a lot of rural/mountainous terrain to cover. In the cities where most people live, the roads are actually pretty good.

Except in Texas.

For a state that often bemoans the federal government and its out of control spending, Texas takes an impressive amount of funds and puts it into a very high-quality and modern interstate system.

Texas will receive over $27 billion (with a B) over the next ~5 years in federal funding for highways and bridges alone. $10 billion was allocated across 2022-2023. Many of their roads are quite nice and only going to improve. Thanks, Uncle Sam!

Texas has high property taxes. It's actually not a low tax state as measured by overall tax burden. Texas is also very proud of its massive, well-resourced public schools (and their football teams!), and pours a lot of tax revenue into them.

Worse than California?

It depends on your income since income taxation in California is extremely graduated. If you make less than $60-70k, you’ll pay less in CA, otherwise you’ll do better in TX.

It depends a lot on the value of your property too as that's where the high taxes in Texas are. So it's a two-dimensional comparison.

Cross from IL to WI on 94. The toll road ends and the reads are so much better. Of course WI will pull over any speeder with out of state plates. They even take credit cards to pay your fine on the spot.

Of course, Florida and Texas both have zero personal income tax.

I live in Washington, so I’m not sure what the big deal of that is.

I grew up in the suburbs. My town had pretty much no commercial base. The next town over had a huge mall. They had much better roads, a much better library, a sports complex, a swimming pool complex, the list goes on. It was obvious to a 10 year old how much of a difference the tax base made.

Of course, we just got a library card in their district and I enjoyed the use of the nicer library as well. But still.

In my experience, it correlates fairly well, with Florida being the notable exception. I have no idea why their roads are so good.

Tourism.

Most of what you’re driving on could be federal highways.

I’m in the same boat, have driven just about everywhere and I haven’t seen any major correlation.

I noticed an immediate degradation in surface quality on the interstate when I crossed into Alabama. Aren't the states responsible for upkeep using federal dollars? Some states are better than others at this.

Initial roadway construction is using primarily federal dollars, but long-term maintenance is usually primarily funded by the state or local municipality.

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