25th Annual Highway Report: Urban Interstate Pavement Condition

The urban Interstates consist of major multi-lane highways in urbanized areas.

The pavement condition of the urban Interstate system worsened from 2016 to 2018, increasing from 5.18% in poor condition to 5.23% (Table 12, Percent Urban Interstate Mileage in Poor Condition, 2018, Figure 7).

In 2018, 1,003 of the 19,161 miles of urban Interstates were rated as poor, as compared to 958 poor-condition miles out of 18,505 miles in 2016, the last time this assessment was completed.

Between 2016 and 2018, the percentage of poor urban Interstate mileage increased in 18 states, decreased in 26 states, and remained about the same in six states.

The percent of poor mileage changed less than one percentage point in 25 states. Arkansas and California led the states in reducing poor condition mileage (by 4.5 and 3.7 percentage points, respectively) while Wyoming and Illinois led the states in increasing poor condition mileage (by 31.0 and 4.2  percentage points, respectively).

The condition of urban Interstate miles also varies widely by state. In 2018, two states (New  Hampshire and Vermont) reported no poor mileage. The bottom three states (Wyoming, Hawaii, and Louisiana) reported more than 10% of their mileage to be in poor condition. These three states, collectively, only have about 4.4% of the urban Interstate mileage in the U.S. (841 of 19,161 miles) but have over 12% of the poor mileage (120 of 1,003 miles).

Urbanized Area Traffic Congestion — Annual Peak Hours Spent in Congestion Per Commuter (2019)