Colorado Ranks 43rd in the Nation in Cost-Effectiveness and Condition

 According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is consistent with the ranking of 43rd that Colorado had in the

last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.

In safety and condition categories, Colorado’s highways rank 45th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 47th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 35th in urban arterial pavement condition, 37th in rural arterial pavement condition, 19th in structurally deficient bridges, 40th in urban fatality rate, and 32nd in rural fatality rate.

Colorado ranks 36th out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 36 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.

In spending and cost-effectiveness, Colorado ranks 42nd in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Colorado ranks 45th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Colorado administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 26th nationwide.

The category in which the state improved the most from the previous report was administrative disbursements (from 40th to 26th).

Colorado worsened the most in capital-bridge disbursements (28th to 42nd).

Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Colorado’s highway performance is worse than Utah’s (8th), Wyoming’s (12th), Kansas’ (22nd), Arizona’s (29th), Nebraska’s (30th), and New Mexico’s (38th).

Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Colorado ranks behind Minnesota (7th) and Wisconsin (26th).

Colorado’s highway system ranks 43rd out of the 50 states overall this year, ranked 43rd in last year’s report, and was 36th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.

“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Colorado should focus on reducing capital and bridge disbursements and maintenance disbursements as well as improving both rural and urban Interstate conditions,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28thAnnual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “The state should also focus on lowering its urban fatality rate, its lowest safety-focused category ranking.”

*2021 data
The Annual Highway Report is based on spending and performance data submitted by state highway agencies to the federal government and urban congestion data from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute for 2020 as well as bridge condition data from the Better Roads inventory for 2021. For more details on the calculation of each of the 13 performance measures used in the report, as well as the overall performance measure, please refer to the appendix in the main report. The report’s dataset includes Interstate, federal, and state roads, but not county or local roads. All rankings are based on performance measures that are ratios rather than absolute values: the financial measures are disbursements per mile, the fatality rate is fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles of travel, the urban congestion measure is the annual delay per auto commuter, and the others are percentages. For example, the state ranking 1^st in structurally deficient bridges has the smallest percentage of structurally deficient bridges, not the smallest number of structurally deficient bridges.