I think New Jeresy is being 'punished' whenever I fly into Newark and have to take a cab to New York. For much of the ride it looks like The Land That Time Forgot. Rusty bridges, broken roads, canals full of garbage and shopping carts. Moscow, Russia has infrastructure and roads in better condition.
That is a major gateway, you might think someone in power would get it cleaned up.
Even here in the Bay Area there are overhead electricity poles, crappy third world signage, bad roads garbage littering the median strip of the highway. How was America, allowed to look like a strip mall virtually everywhere you go? Main Street, looks the same in just about every town in the Midwest. A trillion dollars needs to be spent renewing and rebuilding the US.
I never appreciated town planning departments until I spent weeks living here.