RI Highways Rank Among Worst in U.S. for Performance & Cost-Effectiveness, Says New Report

RI Highways Rank Among Worst in U.S. for Performance & Cost-Effectiveness, Says New Report

Rhode Island has one of the worst highway systems in the country when it comes to highway performance and cost-effectiveness. 

According to the 24th Annual Highway Report published by the Reason Foundation, Rhode Island's highway system ranks 48th in the U.S. for highway performance and cost-effectiveness. 

"Rhode Island needs to reduce its percentage of structurally deficient bridges, improve its arterial pavement condition and reduce its spending. Rhode Island is last in structurally deficient bridges and urban arterial pavement condition as well as in the bottom 10 for all four disbursement categories and rural arterial pavement condition. Compared to nearby states, the report finds Rhode Island’s overall highway performance is worse than New Hampshire (ranks 24th), New York (ranks 45th) and Massachusetts (ranks 46th),” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the Annual Highway Report and assistant director of transportation at Reason Foundation.

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Feigenbaum adds, “Rhode Island is doing better than some comparable states such as New Jersey (ranks 50th), but worse than other comparable states such as Connecticut (ranks 44th).”

RI’s ranking increased one spot from last year's ranking of 49th overall. 

RI Highway Rankings

According to the report, in safety and performance categories, Rhode Island ranks 2nd in overall fatality rate, 50th in structurally deficient bridges, 31st in traffic congestion, 10th in urban Interstate pavement condition and 1st in rural Interstate pavement condition.

RI ranks 45th in total spending per mile and 43rd in capital and bridge costs per mile.

Rhode Island’s best rankings are rural Interstate pavement condition (1st) and overall fatality rate (2nd).

Rhode Island’s worst rankings are urban arterial pavement condition (50th) and structurally deficient bridges (50th).

The Rankings 

North Dakota ranks first in the Annual Highway Report's overall performance and cost-effectiveness rankings for the second straight year.

Virginia and Missouri, two of the 20 most populated states in the country, are second and third in overall performance and cost-effectiveness.

Maine and Kentucky round out the top five states.

The highway systems in New Jersey (50th), Alaska (49th), Rhode Island (48th), Hawaii and Massachusetts rank at the bottom in overall performance and cost-effectiveness.

Annual Highway Report

The Annual Highway Report is based on spending and performance data submitted by state highway agencies to the federal government for 2016 as well as urban congestion data from INRIX and bridge condition data from the Better Roads inventory for 2017.

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 first in structurally deficient bridges has the smallest percentage of structurally deficient bridges, not the smallest number of structurally deficient bridges.