Ask almost anyone who drives here in Michigan, and they are probably going to be less than complimentary about the state's road conditions, and an assessment released this month from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan backs that up.
Michigan's roads ranked 40th out of 50 states for overall road conditions based on bridge and pavement conditions reported by the Federal Highway Administration.
This is unchanged from their ranking in 2024.
Here is how the rankings work: each state is assigned a component index score based on the percentage of infrastructure in both good and poor condition.
Those scores are combined with a simple average to determine the final ranking, and Michigan ended up at 40th out of the 50 states.
After this report came out, I spoke with John Richard with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) in the Grand Region, and he told me part of the reason for road and bridge deterioration is that most of it was designed in the 40s and built back in the 50s and 60s, and is deteriorating.
And Michigan is a tough place to build and maintain roads.
"We're a swampy peninsula that freezes and thaws every other month from October to March, so it's a tough place to maintain roads," said Richard. "But we're doing the best we can with our available resources, but, yeah, we definitely need more funding. And it's not just Michigan. It's all over the country, right? The stuff is coming to the end of its service life, and we're rebuilding, you know, as best as we can with our available resources."
John also told me that MDOT is right on time with their progress on the summer projects, and you can follow along here.
This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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