Infrastructure

Interstate 20 enters Louisiana from Texas at the Shreveport–Bossier City metro and continues east through the Red River floodplain to Monroe before eventually reaching Mississippi. For truckers who run east-west freight across the South, this corridor is a consistent fixture in conversations about the worst road surfaces in the country — and it earns that reputation not through dramatic mountain hazards or blizzard conditions, but through something more mundane and perhaps more insidious: infrastructure that has simply not kept pace with the demands placed on it.

Michigan’s roads have a national reputation that has transcended trucking circles into popular culture. The state’s infrastructure funding shortfall, combined with one of the most punishing freeze-thaw climates in the contiguous United States, has produced a highway network that truckers and civilians alike recognize immediately. “Michigan, Michigan, and Michigan is pretty bad too.” “I75 in Michigan heading towards Detroit is an abomination.” One trucker reported getting motion sickness from the sustained bouncing on a Michigan interstate. This is the road.