(The Center Square) — A new report by the Reason Foundation ranked Louisiana road conditions as the fourth-worst nationally, the lowest in the Southeast region.
The annual report by the libertarian nonprofit policy group ranked the Pelican State’s highways 46th, with only Washington, Hawaii, California and Alaska worse. That’s a six-spot decline from last year’s report.
Regionally, Louisiana was bested by Texas (25th best), Mississippi (18th), Alabama (17th), Arkansas (28th), Florida (14th), Georgia (sixth) and Tennessee (5th).
The report ranked Louisiana 14th best on capital and bridge disbursements, 19th on maintenance and fourth-best on administrative costs.
The good news for the Pelican State ends there, as the report ranked it fifth from the bottom in rural interstate condition, 49th for the condition of its urban interstates, 46th for rural arterial pavement condition, 42nd for urban arterial road conditions and 34th worst for traffic congestion in urbanized areas. The report says Louisiana drivers spend 34 hours per year stuck in traffic.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Louisiana needs to focus on all pavement condition categories and on lowering other disbursements,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the 28th Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “The state ranks in the bottom 10 in all of those categories. For safety-focused categories, Louisiana needs to both lower the state’s other fatality rate and lower the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the state.”
Florida received poor marks for capital and bridge spending (40th) and traffic congestion (39th) where the report says its drivers spend 45 hours per year stuck in traffic.
The Sunshine State also scored strongly in other categories such as 25th in maintenance spending, 23rd in administrative spending, 9th in urban interstate pavement condition, 4th in rural interstate pavement condition, 5th in the condition of rural arterial roads, 48th in urban fatality rate and 38th in rural fatality rate.
“In terms of improving in the road condition and performance categories, Florida should focus on reducing capital-bridge disbursements and reducing traffic congestion. These are the only performance categories in which the state ranks in the bottom 25 states,” Feigenbaum said. “The state should also look to lower its urban fatality rate. Florida’s rank of 48th in urban fatality rate makes it one of the worst in the nation for this safety metric.”
Alabama and Mississippi were back to back at 17th and 18th.
The Yellowhammer State is two spots behind last year’s ranking, led by a top scores in maintenance spending and urban arterial pavement condition and a 4th place finish in rural arterial pavement condition. The urban fatality rate jumped from 38th to 29th, while the rural rate was 33rd. The pavement condition of Alabama’s interstates were rated 33rd for rural interstates and 29th for urban ones.
Mississippi was ranked ahead of two similarly populous states, Kansas (22nd) and New Mexico (38th). The state’s ranking was penalized by a drop from 23rd best to 38th for its rural arterial pavement condition, but was boosted by decreases in both urban area congestion (from 27th to sixth) and the other fatality rate score (49th to 30th).
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Mississippi interstates ranked 35th best for urban interstate pavement condition and 32nd for rural ones. For rural fatalities, the state was ranked 40th.
North Carolina had the highest-rated roads, while Alaska’s were ranked worst.