Rough rides — and smooth: State's roads 5th best, but perfection is a ways off

Utahns drive the fifth-smoothest highways of any state. Really.

But, as motorists bouncing through a construction zone might think, roads are still far from perfect.

Officials measure the roughness of every mile of federal and state highways each year, using vans equipped with high-tech lasers and computers. Deseret Morning News analysis of resulting data shows that Utah has the fifth-lowest percentage among states of highways that federal guidelines consider "rough" or worse.

"I'm really not surprised," said David Creer, executive director of the Utah Trucking Association. Truckers, of course, drive on more highways in more states than most motorists.

"Our industry does believe we in Utah have some of the best roads," he said. "They are well taken care of, especially considering our winter conditions. . . . We really applaud UDOT (the Utah Department of Transportation) for doing a great job of maintaining roads."

Rolayne Fairclough, spokeswoman for the American Automobile Association, may be like most everyday motorists — she was a bit more surprised at the findings. But she said, "I think we all know of problem areas, but when we travel to others states we find we really do have pretty good roads in Utah."

But highways here still vary greatly from place to place, from seemingly smooth as glass to rough enough to shake dental work loose.

Major findings from a Morning News analysis of the data it requested from the state and federal governments include:

• Using federal criteria, just 2.4 percent of state and federal highways in Utah are considered "rough." The only states that scored better or as well are: Georgia, 0.5 percent; North Dakota, 0.6 percent; Wyoming, 1.0 percent; and Florida, 2.4 percent.

• Utah uses somewhat different measures to determine what it calls "ride quality," which include not only the roughness data reported to the federal government but also additional data on road cracking, rutting and shifting. Under those standards, the state ranks 7 percent of its highways as "very good"; 30 percent are "good"; 38 percent are "fair"; 20 percent "poor"; and 6 percent "very poor."

• The single roughest one-mile segment of highway in the state in 2004 is on U-113 near Heber (on the road to Midway.)

• Three one-mile segments of interstate freeway tied as the smoothest: I-15 near the Springville interchange; I-15 at the North Ogden interchange; and a stretch of I-80 about 30 miles east of Wendover.

• The overall smoothest highway in Utah in 2004, based on the average of scores for all its individual segments, is U-193 in Clearfield, along the southern border of Hill Air Force Base.