How Bad Are Duluth’s Roads? Analysis Of City Data Reveals Paved Road Conditions

If you live in Northern Minnesota, rough roads are just part of the territory. The extremes of our seasons really take a toll on pavement.

While the brutal cold and snow of winter and (occasional) sweltering heat of summertime cause plenty of issues on their own, it's springtime that really wreaks havoc.

As days get longer and temperatures trend warmer, the cycle of warm days with snow melting and cold nights with freezing temperatures returning creates the perfect storm of freshly-melted water to seep into cracks that then re-freeze, expanding and busting up pavement.

People who live in Duluth (or visitors who have ventured off the main roadways) know that there are some pretty rough roads in parts of the city. Where are the roughest areas of roads? Just how bad are Duluth's roads overall?

Grading Duluth's city streets

The City of Duluth has a Pavement Condition Map on its website that grades all of the city's paved roads. The interactive map doesn't look at county or state roads, alleys, parking lots, private roads, or unpaved roads. It focuses specifically on paved city streets and their conditions.

READ MORE: City of Duluth Removing Coin-Operated Parking Meters, Increasing Parking Fees

The map uses a three-tier grading index, with green-marked roads indicating a grade of 80 to 100, the best possible score. The second tier is coded in blue, indicating a grade of between 30 and 79. The final tier is coded in red, indicating roads in the greatest level of disrepair, with scores between 1 and 29.

The data on this map is dated from 2024, so it is recent, but not current.

How many of Duluth's roads are on the low end of the grading scale? Let's take a look.

How bad are Duluth's paved roads?

As far as city-managed paved roads are concerned, the map above shows a clear trend of most of Duluth's roads being in the "blue" mid-tier grade range.

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As a matter of fact, 87% of Duluth's road surface falls in this middle-of-the-pack category. That said, not very many of the city's streets are in the highest category. Here's a breakdown:

% of Duluth City Street Surface By Pavement Condition Index

• Streets Surface With Pavement Condition index of 80-100 (best): 2.5%
• Streets Surface With Pavement Condition index of 30-79 (middle): 87%
• Streets Surface With Pavement Condition index of 1-29 (worst): 10.5%

That "middle of the pack" category also happens to be a much larger window, with conditions index scores ranging from 30 to 79 (49 points), a much larger window than the other two categories, which are less than 30 points each.

Where are Duluth's worst paved roads?

The roads in the worst conditions are scattered around the City of Duluth, mostly in residential areas around the city.

While a majority of streets in the worst condition are just portions of the overall roadway, one street stands out as the worst overall within the city.

Aside from a few blocks in better condition, nearly all of East 5th Street, from Mesaba Avenue all the way out to 24th Avenue East, appears to be the street that is most consistently poorly graded among all of the city's paved streets on their map.

When it comes ot neighborhoods with a higher level of poorly-rated roads, here are some that stand out (in order from west to east):

• Gary New Duluth
• Piedmont Heights
• Portions of Lincoln Park along the hillside
• Central Hillside
• East Hillside
• The area between UMD and St. Scholastica
• Portions of Congdon Park
• Hunters Park

Again, the data on the city's map is dated from 2024, so some of this may have changed since then, but in my experiences driving around, a lot of this seems pretty accurate.