Kentucky's Rankings in the
28th Annual Highway Report
Kentucky’s highway system ranks 11th in the nation in overall cost-effectiveness and condition.
According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a four-spot fall from Kentucky’s ranking of 7th overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.
In safety and condition categories, Kentucky’s highways rank 30th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 24th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 14th in urban arterial pavement condition, 7th in rural arterial pavement condition, 33rd in structurally deficient bridges, 22nd in urban fatality rate, and 17th in rural fatality rate.
Kentucky ranks 22nd out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 16 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.
In spending and cost-effectiveness, Kentucky ranks 15th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Kentucky ranks 17th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Kentucky’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 2nd nationwide.
The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were urban fatality rate (40th to 22nd), rural fatality rate (24th to 17th), and rural arterial pavement condition (14th to 7th).
Kentucky worsened the most in urban Interstate pavement condition (16th to 30th).
Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Kentucky’s overall highway performance is better than Indiana’s (20th), West Virginia’s (33rd), and Illinois’, but worse than Virginia’s (4th) and Tennessee’s (5th).
Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Kentucky ranks ahead of Oregon (35th) and Louisiana (46th).
Kentucky’s highway system ranks 11th out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 7th in last year’s report, and was 5th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Kentucky should focus on lowering the state’s other disbursements,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “It’s the state’s only non-safety category to rank in the bottom 20. For safety-focused categories, Kentucky needs to work to lower its bottom five other fatality rate.”
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.