Maine's Rankings in the
28th Annual Highway Report
Maine’s highway system ranks 21st in the nation in overall cost-effectiveness and condition.
According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is an 11-spot improvement from Maine’s ranking of 32nd overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.
In safety and condition categories, Maine’s highways rank 6th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 3rd in rural Interstate pavement condition, 29th in urban arterial pavement condition, 44th in rural arterial pavement condition, 46th in structurally deficient bridges, 4th in urban fatality rate, and 15th in rural fatality rate.
Maine ranks 2nd out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 7 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.
In spending and cost-effectiveness, Maine ranks 21st in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Maine ranks 35th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Maine’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 11th nationwide.
The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were rural Interstate pavement condition (27th to 3rd) and other fatality rate (32nd to 23rd).
Maine worsened the most in rural fatalities (from 8th to 15th).
Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Maine’s overall highway performance is better than Massachusetts’ (40th) and Vermont’s (44th) but worse than New Hampshire’s (19th).
Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Maine ranks above Hawaii (48th) but below Montana (16th).
Maine’s highway system ranks 21st out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 32nd in last year’s report, and was 4th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Maine should focus on improving rural arterial pavement condition and lowering maintenance disbursements. For the performance and road condition categories, these are the state’s lowest rankings,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “For the safety-focused categories, Maine needs to look to lower the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the state. Currently, Maine ranks in the bottom five for bridges.”
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.