Study: Florida ranks 40th in highway performance and cost-effectiveness

The 24th Annual Highway Report, based on data that states submitted to the federal government, ranks each state’s highway system in 13 categories, including traffic fatalities, pavement condition, congestion, spending per mile, administrative costs and more.

From the Reason Foundation

Florida’s highway system ranks 40th in the nation in overall cost-effectiveness and condition, according to the Annual Highway Report published today by Reason Foundation. The state dropped five spots from the previous report, where Florida ranked 35th overall.

While Florida’s pavement condition is excellent and it has few structurally deficient bridges, its overall ranking was hurt by very high fatality rates and the nation’s second-highest per-mile costs.

“To improve in the overall rankings, Florida could reduce its fatality rates and traffic congestion, or reduce its per-mile costs. If the state can reduce its per-mile costs and fatality rates even slightly, its ranking would improve significantly. Florida has high costs in three disbursement categories (total costs per mile, capital and bridge spending per mile, and maintenance spending per mile) and ranks in the bottom five in all three fatality rate categories,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the Annual Highway Report and assistant director of transportation at Reason Foundation. “Compared to nearby states, the report finds Florida’s overall highway performance is worse than Georgia (ranks 26th), Alabama (ranks 10th) and South Carolina (ranks 20th). Florida is also doing worse than comparable states, such as Texas (ranks 23rd) and Pennsylvania (ranks 35th), but does rank ahead of California (43rd) and New York (45th).”

In safety and performance categories, Florida ranks 3rd in structurally deficient bridges, 5th in urban Interstate pavement condition and 6th in rural Interstate pavement condition, 40th in traffic congestion, and 42nd in overall fatality rate. On spending, Florida ranks 49th in total spending per mile and 49th in capital and bridge costs per mile.

Florida’s best rankings are in urban arterial pavement condition (1st) and rural arterial pavement condition (2nd). Florida’s worst rankings are in total disbursements per mile (49th) and capital and bridge disbursements per mile (49th).

Florida’s state-controlled highway mileage makes it the 20th largest highway system in the country.

Utilizing data that states submitted to the federal government, Reason Foundation’s 24th Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-owned roads in 13 categories, including pavement condition on urban and rural Interstates, deficient bridges, traffic fatalities, administrative costs, and spending per mile on state roads.

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

The full Annual Highway Report, complete rankings in each category, and historical data from previous editions are available here:

https://reason.org/policy-study/24th-annual-highway-report/

https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/24th-annual-highway-report-2019.pdf

Florida’s Complete Results

Ranking (out of 50 states)

• Overall Rank (*see explanation below): #40
• Overall Rank in Previous Report: #35

Ranking in Each Category

• Total Disbursements per Mile - #49
• Capital-Bridge Disbursements per Mile - #49
• Maintenance Disbursements per Mile - #41
• Administrative Disbursements per Mile - #37
• Rural Interstate Percent in Poor Condition - #6
• Urban Interstate Percent in Poor Condition - #5
• Rural Other Principal Arterial Percent in Poor Condition - #2
• Urban Other Principal Arterial Percent in Poor Condition - #1
• Urban Area Congestion* - #40
• Structurally Deficient Bridges, Percent* - #3
• Overall Fatality Rate - #42
• Rural Fatality Rate - #48
• Urban Fatality Rate - #47

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

Reason Foundation's transportation experts have advised four presidential administrations, along with numerous state and metro transportation departments and planning organizations. Baruch Feigenbaum is lead author of the Annual Highway Report and his bio information is available here:

https://reason.org/author/baruch-feigenbaum/