Georgia's Rankings in the
27th Annual Highway Report
Georgia's Overall Ranking in Recent Annual Highway Reports
According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a two-spot worsening from Georgia’s ranking of 4th overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.
In safety and condition categories, Georgia’s highways rank 13th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 14th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 3rd in urban arterial pavement condition, 2nd in rural arterial pavement condition, 5th in structurally deficient bridges, 39th in urban fatality rate, and 25th in rural fatality rate.
Georgia ranks 43rd out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 54 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.
In spending and cost-effectiveness, Georgia ranks 8th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Georgia ranks 15th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Georgia’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 32nd nationwide.
The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were rural fatality rate (from 35th to 25th) and rural arterial pavement condition (8th to 2nd).
Georgia worsened the most in other disbursements (7th to 22nd).
Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Georgia’s overall highway performance is better than Alabama’s (17th) and Mississippi’s (18th) but worse than South Carolina’s (2nd) and Tennessee’s (5th).
Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Georgia ranks ahead of Ohio (10th) but behind North Carolina (1st).
Georgia’s highway system ranks 6th out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 4th in last year’s report, and was 26th in the nation five years ago, in 2019.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Georgia should look at improving its urbanized area congestion, the only category where the state ranks in the bottom 10,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “Reducing the urban fatality rate, which is the only safety category the state ranks in the bottom 15, should also be a priority for Georgia.”
*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 1st in structurally deficient bridges has the smallest percentage of structurally deficient bridges, not the smallest number of structurally deficient bridges.