Louisiana's Rankings in the
28th Annual Highway Report
Louisiana’s highway system ranks 46th in the nation in overall cost-effectiveness and condition.
According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a six-spot decline from Louisiana’s ranking of 40th overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.
In safety and condition categories, Louisiana’s highways rank 49th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 45th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 42nd in urban arterial pavement condition, 46th in rural arterial pavement condition, 44th in structurally deficient bridges, 37th in urban fatality rate, and 13th in rural fatality rate.
Louisiana ranks 34th out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 34 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.
In spending and cost-effectiveness, Louisiana ranks 14th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Louisiana ranks 19th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Louisiana’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 4th nationwide.
The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were urban fatality rate (46th to 37th) and rural fatality rate (20th to 13th).
Louisiana worsened the most in other disbursements (17th to 45th).
Compared to neighboring states, Louisiana’s overall highway performance is worse than Mississippi’s (18th), Texas’ (25th), and Arkansas’ (28th).
Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Louisiana ranks behind South Carolina (2nd) and Kentucky (11th).
Louisiana’s highway system ranks 46th out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 40th in last year’s report, and was 34th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Louisiana needs to focus on all pavement condition categories and on lowering other disbursements. The state ranks in the bottom 10 in all of those categories,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “For safety-focused categories, Louisiana needs to both lower the state’s other fatality rate and lower the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the state.”
Reason Foundation’s 28th Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-controlled highways in 13 categories, including pavement and bridge conditions, traffic fatalities, and spending. In the performance categories, ranking first implies the state has the best or lowest fatality rate and its road pavement is in the best condition. A ranking of 50th in performance categories means the state has the worst fatality rates or pavement conditions. In simplified terms, in the cost-effectiveness categories, a rank of 50 means the state spends more money, and a first-place ranking means the state spends less money than other states in that category.
The report’s data are primarily information each state directly reported to the Federal Highway Administration for 2022. Better Roads and Bridges provides the deficient bridge data, and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute provides the traffic congestion data.
Please see the complete 28th Annual Highway Report for detailed methodology and a comprehensive list of data sources.