LA has some of the worst road surfaces I've seen anywhere, even on the freeways. On the flip side, though, I suspect the US has more than 5x the roads despite only having 5x our population.
On the other hand, the city I'm from originally is finally getting to widening one of the core freeways in an area that's seen a ton of growth over the past twenty years, and it sounds like just as much a pain for the people living there as the 405 construction has been in LA. There's just a far lower total of affected people since the city is so much less populated. :)
Even the medium sized midwestern city I am from has problems with road widening. I think it's basically a scourge wherever it goes on. There are some freeways in LA that almost seem impossible to shut down under any non-catastrophic circumstances, such as the 5 downtown (or anything downtown, probably) so it'll be interesting to see how they approach that over time.
County roads often suck because the counties are broke for a variety of reasons. City streets are awful because the state doesn't provide any aid -- although "towns" (some of which are bigger than cities) do.
The other thing is related to NY being ahead of the curve on highway construction. Many of the "expressways" and "parkways" in the NYC metro area are ineligible for federal highway funds because they connect toll bridges, but don't receive any toll money.
Massachusetts has a road system designed by masochists who didn't drive. No amount of money could fix it.