North Carolina's Rankings in the
28th Annual Highway Report
North Carolina’s highway system ranks 1st in the nation in overall cost-effectiveness and condition.
According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a one-spot improvement from North Carolina’s ranking of 2nd overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.
In safety and condition categories, North Carolina’s highways rank 17th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 20th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 10th in urban arterial pavement condition, 15th in rural arterial pavement condition, 31st in structurally deficient bridges, 9th in urban fatality rate, and 39th in rural fatality rate.
North Carolina ranks 21st out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 15 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.
In spending and cost-effectiveness, North Carolina ranks 7th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. North Carolina ranks 5th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. North Carolina’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 1st nationwide.
The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were urban fatality rate (20th to 9th) and administrative disbursements (8th to 1st).
North Carolina worsened the most in rural fatality rate (22nd to 39th).
Compared to neighboring and nearby states, North Carolina’s overall highway performance is better than South Carolina’s (2nd), Virginia’s (4th), Tennessee’s (5th), and Georgia’s (6th).
Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, North Carolina ranks ahead of Georgia (6th) and Michigan (23rd).
North Carolina’s highway system ranks 1st out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 2nd in last year’s report, and was 17th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.
“In terms of improving North Carolina’s rankings in the road condition and performance categories, the state ought to focus on congestion, which is a growing problem in many parts of the state,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “In the safety categories, there is still a lot of room for improvement. North Carolina ought to prioritize reducing its rural and other fatality rates, in which the state ranks 39th in both categories.”
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.