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I have no idea where this information is from. Indiana and Michigan have road conditions for 4 months that create potholes, but the spending on pot hole and road manatiance seem near to correct. Red Arrow Highway and I-94 along the lakeshore in michigan is near the toughest conditions for a road in north america. These roads are in great condition compaired to 20 years ago, they have been on good repair schedule for the past 10 years. The major cost of bridge replacement is mostly done , painting and inspection has become yearly thing.

Even the major roads done by the IL DOT have remained in good shape the past 5 years despite passenger cars still being remarkably heavy. Now county repaired roads in IL are insanely bad and tend to be all at once. The toll roads with their unlimited budget are where most of us do millage around chicago. Most local roads in IL and NW IN have benefited from less traffic but the truck routes not maintained by IN and IL DOT directly can get insanely bad.

The corruption in IL and a few counties of IN are at the County Level. Local trucking firms take great pleasure in avoiding scales. Along with local trucks that could be 120,000lbs shuttling steel around the shops of IL and IN that support steel mills. Some of the improvement is surely the downturn in constant overpass work that required heavy loads. Road Money from state and federal sources goes in and comes out in contracts that never seem to get done localy.

Indiana has a real lack of potholes outside against historical potholes the upper thirds old cities. Now if we include only the non golden dome parts South Bend Indiana we are at a south side chicago level of potholes.

The Indiana DOT went to gentler plan of use of road salt and better tuned snowplows about 10 years ago for a half a billion dollars of savings. The constant salting is gone and the use of synthetic tar correction of cracks whenever road conditions allow have improved northern indiana roads considerably.