February 9, 2004
RALEIGH — North Carolina’s state-maintained highways now rank among the worst in the nation in such areas as pavement condition and urban congestion according to the findings of a new national study released today by the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based think tank.
Dr. David Hartgen, a professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an adjunct scholar and policy analyst for the nonprofit Locke Foundation, has issued an annual study of state highway performance since 1992. The new report, which examines trends in highway data from 1984 to 2002, found that North Carolina has fallen to 45th in the nation in highway performance and to 36th in the nation in the overall cost-effectiveness of its state-maintained road system.
North Carolina’s overall ranking last year was 20th. It generally ranked in the top tier of states during the 1980s and early 1990s.
The state’s transportation problems were particularly acute in areas such as rural pavement conditions and traffic congestion on urban interstates. Only three states have a higher percentage of congested urban interstates — California (82 percent), Maryland (82 percent), and Minnesota (77 percent) — than did North Carolina (75 percent). The state also ranked 42nd in the condition of urban interstates, 44th in rural interstate condition, and 45th in the condition of rural primary roads.
“This is a sad showing for a state that once prided itself on good roads,” Hartgen said.
The study was based on data submitted to the federal government by all the states, for 2002, the latest year available. South Carolina was rated 22nd, Virginia 28th, Tennessee 27th, and Georgia 3rd. Although North Carolina has the second-largest state-owned road system in the country, due in part to the existence of county road systems in other states, its per-mile expenditures have historically lagged other states. The system was in relatively good shape until recently, when deterioration increased relative to other states, Hartgen found.
The study also concluded that the United States’ overall improvement in average highway conditions had slowed to a halt, even as the states and federal government increased their expenditures. Nationally, five of seven performance indicators worsened or held steady from 2001 to 2002. “Congress and the states must act now to head off a perfect storm in road repairs,” Hartgen said. “It’s not just more dollars. We must also put the dollars on the ground.”
Hartgen’s latest study of NC and national road conditions is now available on the John Locke Foundation’s website. A previous study by Hartgen for the John Locke Foundation examined North Carolina politicians’ recent history of promising more than they could deliver on highway expansion and maintenance projects, and proposed ways to increase the system’s efficiency and focus more attention on the state’s most pressing transportation needs. The report, published in 2000, is available online.
And another John Locke Foundation report, published in 1999, found that some regions of North Carolina fared better than others in getting highway dollars commensurate with highway usage, and that years of diverting highway funds to non-highway uses had contributed to the state’s worsening congestion and highway conditions. That report is also available online.
For more information, call Dr. Hartgen at 704-687-4308 or email him at [email protected]. For more information about the Locke Foundation’s transportation studies, call Dr. Roy Cordato at 919-828-3876 or email him at [email protected].
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