I was listening to a BBC pre-election podcast last week, one of those roundups of what voters are actually thinking ahead of the UK local elections. Cost of living topped the list, as expected. But then the presenter paused and said, with what sounded like genuine surprise: potholes. People kept bringing up potholes. Not as an afterthought. Persistently, apparently.
I wasn't surprised to hear it. I moved here from Ireland a few years ago, and the state of the roads was honestly one of the first things I noticed. We complain about roads in Ireland (it's basically a national sport), but nothing prepared me for navigating around craters in Amherst. Potholes are not a niche grievance. They're everywhere, they affect everyone, and yet they seem to be chronically at the bottom of the priority list for the people whose job it is to fix them. The UK situation has gotten so bad the government is reportedly considering withholding funding from councils that fail to address them. When a country reaches the point of financially penalizing local authorities for not filling holes in the road, something has gone quite wrong.
The weather is always cited as the reason roads get so bad here in Western Massachusetts, and yes, freeze-thaw cycles are brutal. But the weather is not a surprise. Snow arrives every year. Ice follows. More snow after that. None of this is news to anyone sitting on a town council in New England. Yet road repairs happen at a glacial pace. We're heading into summer and the roads around Amherst are still an obstacle course.
This year alone, our household has had to replace three tires because of pothole damage. And we're lucky. We can absorb that hit. But what about families who can't? A blown tire isn't a minor inconvenience when it means missing a shift, pulling a child out of school pickup, or skipping a medical appointment. Beyond the financial toll, there's a serious safety dimension: damaged road surfaces cause accidents. Older people and cyclists are especially at risk. And then there are the essential services (ambulances, fire crews, police) that rely on these roads every single day. Potholes affect everyone. Residents are talking about them constantly. So why aren't local politicians fixing them?
The process for managing road repairs in Amherst, on paper, sounds reasonable. Road condition mapping is carried out every three to five years, with the most recent physical survey completed in September 2025. In the intervening years, a modeling tool called Citilogix uses a computer program to estimate road deterioration and rank streets by need.
That's where the cracks start to show, literally and figuratively. Prioritization decisions are based on physical data that's already months or years old, with a prediction model layered on top. Given the scale of the pothole problem visible to anyone driving Amherst's main roads right now, in mid-May, it's hard not to wonder whether this process needs updating. The technology to close the gap already exists: drones could photograph road conditions between surveys cheaply and quickly. Why aren't we using them?
Awareness is clearly not the problem. Local councilors drive these roads. They see what everyone else sees. So what explains the inertia?
My cynical view (and I'll own the cynicism) is that smooth roads don't make for good photos. You can't stand beside a freshly resurfaced street and announce a legacy. There's no ribbon-cutting, no viral social media moment, no career-advancing headline. A pothole-free road is maintenance, not monument. Compare that with a library renovation, a new community building, a splashy infrastructure announcement: those have openings, press coverage, and a permanent plaque with someone's name on it.
It's not just national politics that's gone this way. Local politics has caught the same bug, and somewhere in that shift, the basics got deprioritized. Roads are the most fundamental infrastructure a community has. If an administration can't set aside the budget to keep them passable, can't deliver on the most elemental of responsibilities, it's worth asking what gives them confidence they can manage anything more complicated.
There's also a communication problem working against public patience. We are so surrounded by potholes that we literally can't see progress. If one gets filled on a side street, the driver on the main road doesn't notice. They're still dodging three more. Local authorities are losing the narrative by default.
It's not a complicated fix either. Publish a counter. Share a map of repairs completed this month. Let road crews feel seen and valued for the work they are doing. Right now, the public's perception, fairly or not, is that nothing is happening. A bit of visibility could change that without costing a cent.
I went looking to see who's actually getting this right, and the answer is: some states are doing this really well, and not necessarily the ones you'd expect.
Indiana has ranked first in road quality nationally for two years running, with 97.4% of its roads meeting federal standards. Minnesota tops the overall list for best road conditions, with more than 90% of urban and rural roads in fair or good shape. The credit there goes not to massive spending but to consistent preventive maintenance: fixing cracks before they become potholes, rather than waiting until the road is an obstacle course and scrambling to patch it.
The most interesting case is Georgia. It spends just $16,000 per lane mile (47th in the nation, more than 50% below the national average) and still ranks in the top five for road quality. That's not luck. That's data-driven asset management and a decision to spend what you have strategically rather than reactively. Wyoming, meanwhile, has used 3D scanning technology on its roadways to identify the conditions that create potholes before they fully form, which partly explains why it ranks second nationally for fewest pothole complaints.
Massachusetts is not Indiana or Georgia. But the gap isn't about money alone. It's about approach.
I don't have a tidy conclusion here. The roads are bad, the process exists, and the technology to do better is available and affordable. What seems to be missing is the political will to treat road maintenance as a priority rather than a background task that gets done when everything else is sorted.
— Emma
Sources:
Road process in Amherst: Amherst Indy — Town Engineer Explains How Road Repairs Are Prioritized
UK funding cuts: The Telegraph — Councils face funding cuts over potholes (paywalled)
Indiana #1 road quality: Indiana Named No. 1 For Road Quality In US — InkFreeNews | States With the Best Road Conditions — U.S. News
Minnesota top-ranked: Minnesota Has Nation's Best Roads — CBS Minnesota | States With the Worst (And Best) Road Conditions — ConsumerAffairs
Wyoming 3D scanning: Wyoming is the #2 State With Least Pothole Complaints — Stacker