Annual Highway Report: Ranking each state’s highway conditions and cost-effectiveness

North Dakota, Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, and North Carolina have the most cost-effective highway systems, according to the Annual Highway Report published today by Reason Foundation. New Jersey, Rhode Island, Alaska, Hawaii, and New York have the worst combination of highway performance and cost-effectiveness, the study finds.

The Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-controlled highways in 13 categories, including urban and rural pavement condition, deficient bridges, traffic fatalities, spending per mile, and administrative costs per mile of highway.

A number of states with large populations and busy highways performed well in the overall rankings, including Virginia (2nd overall), Missouri (3rd), North Carolina (5th), Georgia (14th), and Texas (16th).

Nationally, the study finds America’s highway system is incrementally improving in almost every category. However, a 10-year average indicates the nation’s highway system problems are concentrated in the bottom 10 states and, despite spending more and more money, these worst-performing states are finding it difficult to improve.

For example, 43% of the urban arterial primary mileage in poor condition is in six states—California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Rhode Island. Approximately 25% of the rural Interstate mileage in poor condition is in just three states (Alaska, Colorado, and Washington). While a majority of states reduced their percentages of structurally deficient bridges, five states—Rhode Island, West Virginia, Iowa, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania—still report more than 15% of their bridges as deficient.

For total spending, three states—Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey—spent more than $250,000 per lane-mile of highway. In contrast, five states—Missouri, South Carolina, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota—spent less than $30,000 per mile of highway.

Introduction

Reason Foundation’s 26^th Annual Highway Report rates state highway systems on cost versus quality using a method developed in the early 1990s by David T. Hartgen, Ph.D., emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and since been refined by Hartgen, M. Gregory Fields, Ph.D., Baruch Feigenbaum, and Spence Purnell.

Since states have different highway budgets, system sizes, and traffic and geographic circumstances, their comparative performance depends on both system performance and the resources available. To determine relative performance across the country, state highway system budgets (per mile of responsibility) are compared with system performance, state-by-state. In this report, states with high overall ratings typically have better-than-average highway system conditions (good for road users) along with relatively efficient spending in per-mile categories (good for taxpayers).

The following table shows the overall highway performance of the state highway systems using 2019 and 2020 data. This year’s leading states are North Dakota, Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, and North Carolina. At the other end of the rankings are New Jersey, Rhode Island, Alaska, Hawaii, and New York.

The top-performing states are a mix of large and small states as well as more urban and more rural. In the report’s overall rankings, some very rural states may have a slight advantage (see Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and Figure 1). But a number of states with large urban areas also rank highly in the overall rankings, including: Virginia (2^nd), Missouri (3^rd), North Carolina (5^th), Tennessee (10^th), Georgia (14^th), and Texas (16^th).

A careful review suggests that numerous factors— terrain, climate, truck volumes, urbanization, system age, budget priorities, unit cost differences, state budget circumstances, and management/maintenance philosophies, just to name a few—are all affecting the overall highway system performance in each state.

26th Annual Highway Report: Each State’s Highway Performance Ranking By Category