Indiana Ranks 20th in the Nation in Cost-Effectiveness and Condition

According to the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation, this is a three-spot improvement from Indiana’s ranking of 23rd overall in the last evaluation of the condition, safety, and costs of roads and bridges in all 50 states.

In safety and condition categories, Indiana’s highways rank 22nd in urban Interstate pavement condition, 34th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 4th in urban arterial pavement condition, 3rd in rural arterial pavement condition, 24th in structurally deficient bridges, 45th in urban fatality rate, and 14th in rural fatality rate.

Indiana ranks 28th out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 22 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion.

In spending and cost-effectiveness, Indiana ranks 46th in capital and bridge disbursements, which are the costs of building new roads and bridges and widening existing ones. Indiana ranks 49th in maintenance spending, such as the costs of repaving roads and filling in potholes. Indiana’s administrative disbursements, including office spending that doesn’t make its way to roads, ranks 16th nationwide.

The categories in which the state improved the most from the previous report were rural fatality rate (37th to 14th) and urban arterial pavement condition (18th to 4th).

Indiana worsened the most in the urban fatality rate (24th to 45th).

Compared to neighboring and nearby states, Indiana’s overall highway performance is better than Illinois’ (36th) and Michigan’s (23rd) but worse than Ohio’s (10th) and Kentucky’s (11th).

Comparing its overall performance to similarly populated states, Indiana ranks behind Missouri (9th) but ahead of Massachusetts (40th).

Indiana’s highway system ranks 20th out of 50 states overall this year, ranked 23rd in last year’s report, and was 33rd in the nation five years ago, in 2019.

“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Indiana should focus on reducing capital-bridge and maintenance disbursements. These are the only categories in which the state ranks in the bottom five and make up the worst rankings for the state overall,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “Reducing the number of traffic fatalities on urban roads should also be a priority for Indiana.”

*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.