When it comes to performance and cost-effectiveness, a new report from the nonprofit Reason Foundation has dubbed North Dakota, Missouri and Kansas at the top of the state-owned highway chain among the 50 United States.
On the opposite spectrum were Delaware, Alaska and New Jersey at dead last. These overall rankings were based on the results of state-by-state performances in 13 categories, including total spending per mile, capital and bridge disbursements per mile, maintenance disbursements per mile, administrative disbursements per mile, various pavement conditions, urbanized area congestion, structurally deficient bridges and rates of fatality.
Baruch Feigenbaum, the lead author of the Reason Foundation’s 25th Annual Highway Report, as well as its managing director of transportation policy, noted the results might make people want to dismiss the matter as one of geography or population. However, he noted that many factors played their part, from terrain to budget priorities and maintenance practices.
“The states with the three largest highway systems—North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—all rank in the top 21 this year,” Feigenbaum said. “Meanwhile, states with the smallest amount of mileage to manage, like Hawaii, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, are some of the worst-performing states. Prioritizing maintenance, targeting and fixing problem areas, and reducing bottlenecks are among the successful strategies states can use to improve their quality and efficiency.”
The highway report relied on spending and performance data submitted by each state’s highway agencies to the federal government in 2018. Data was also pulled from 2019 urban congestion figures from analytics company INRIX and paired with bridge condition data from the Better Roads inventory for that same year.
Some other notable specifics were that North Carolina, which manages the largest state-owned highway system in the country, ranked 14th for overall performance. Texas, with the second-largest amount of state mileage, ranked 18th. New York and California, two of the most populous states, ranked 44th and 43rd, respectively.
Overall, the report concluded that the general quality and safety of U.S. highways have improved with an increase in spending on state-owned roads. That spending went up to $151.8 billion, a 9 percent increase over 2016 figures. While seven out of nine performance-focused categories saw improvements, pavement condition declined, with a few states playing an outsized responsibility for that.
More than a quarter of the urban interstate mileage now in poor condition can be traced to three states: California, New York and Wyoming. Bridges, however, have seen some improvement since the last report. In 2019, 46,771 bridges, 7.6 percent of the total, were rated deficient. Texas, Nevada and Arizona have fared best there, with less than two percent of their bridges rated structurally deficient, but Rhode Island is in dire straits, with 23 percent of its bridges in deficient condition.
One overwhelmingly positive note came from traffic fatality figures, where rates fell in 35 out of 50 states. As of the 2018-2019 data sets, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey – a rare upside for New Jersey in this report – held the lowest fatality rates, while South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana had the highest.
The biggest turnarounds since the last highway report came from Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Iowa. Arkansas leaped from 32nd position to 9th overall, while Mississippi moved from 25th to 8th, Wisconsin went from 38th to 22nd, South Carolina from 20th to 6th and Iowa from 31st to 20th.
New Jersey has the worst highway system in the country, a distinction it has held for years. This was particularly driven by last rankings in total disbursements, capital bridge disbursements and maintenance disbursements per mile, although it also ranked in the bottom 10 for administrative disbursements per mile, urbanized area congestion and pavement condition among its urban interstate, rural arterial and urban arterial roads.