Delaware Ranks 41st in the Nation in Cost-Effectiveness and Condition

According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a six-spot fall from Delaware’s ranking of 35th overall in the

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

In safety and condition categories, Delaware’s highways rank 46th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 16th in urban arterial pavement condition, 21st in rural arterial pavement condition, 4th in structurally deficient bridges, 36th in urban fatality rate, and 49th in rural fatality rate. Delaware does not have any rural Interstate mileage.

Delaware ranks 48th out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 83 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.

In spending and cost-effectiveness, Delaware’s ranks 4th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Delaware ranks 46th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Delaware’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 48th nationwide.

The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were other disbursements (25th to 10th) and urban fatality rate (43rd to 36th).

Delaware worsened the most in other fatality rate (25th to 38th).

Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Delaware’s overall highway performance is worse than Virginia’s (4th), Maryland’s (32nd), New Jersey’s (34th) and Pennsylvania’s (37th).

Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Delaware ranks ahead of Rhode Island (42nd) but behind South Dakota (27th).

Delaware’s highway system ranks 41st out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 35th in last year’s report, and was 42nd in the nation five years ago, in 2019.

“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Delaware should focus on lowering both maintenance and administrative disbursements, as well as reducing traffic congestion, as there are three categories in which the state ranks in the bottom five,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “Reducing the urban, rural, and other fatality rates should also be a priority as the state ranks in the bottom 15 of all states for all three metrics.”

*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.