Louisiana ranks in top 10 of states with horrible infrastructure

The nation’s infrastructure is frequently talked about at political campaign rallies. The promise of better roads, funding and jobs created from infrastructure projects are key ticket items. They’re right about the nation needing infrastructure improvements: a Federal Highway Administration reports show 61% of the country’s highways are in fair to poor condition. Transportation for America estimates a cost of $231 billion a year to keep our existing road network in acceptable repair.

Taxpayer funded highway capital delegated for states to maintain roads isn’t enough to cover necessary repairs. Many states are spending the majority of their highway capital on expansion instead of maintenance of roads. At this rate, it becomes a never ending game of maintenance catch up. On top of taxpayer dollars, it’s estimated that driving on roads in poor condition costs motorists $120 billion in vehicle repairs and operating costs. That’s $533 per driver.

Maintaining quality roads in a given state is a matter of priority and delegation of funds. While analyzing FHA data, we found a correlation between states that use funds to maintain roads and states that rank well overall for road infrastructure. States with poor road infrastructure had higher costs per driver and typically poor road conditions across the board.

We here at QuoteWizard analyzed Federal Highway Administration data to rank states on overall quality of road infrastructure. Rankings are a composite score based on a state’s rating in:

Percentage of poor condition roads
Annual cost per motorist due to roads in need of repair
Percentage of structurally deficient bridges

Rankings 1 to 50 with first being worst overall road infrastructure and 50th being best overall road infrastructure. Also included, but not part of the ranking factors, is the percentage of state highway spending on road repairs to show which states are addressing the problem.

Rank (worst)	State	% roads in poor condition	Cost per motorist	% bridges structurally deficient	% of spending on road repairs
1	Rhode Island	53	$823	23	2
2	Oklahoma	33	$900	14	27
3	West Virginia	31	$723	18	19
4	Mississippi	30	$820	11	4
5	Pennsylvania	30	$610	18	22
6	New Jersey	34	$703	8	57
7	California	45	$862	6	35
8	Missouri	23	$699	12	20
9	Louisiana	25	$624	14	22
10	New Mexico	31	$768	6	39
11	Wisconsin	29	$736	8	33
12	Connecticut	34	$676	7	21
13	Hawaii	42	$764	5	31
14	Michigan	24	$645	10	54
15	Massachusetts	3	$627	9	23
16	Maine	22	$529	13	65
17	New Hampshire	25	$525	10	45
18	South Dakota	14	$563	18	69
19	South Carolina	18	$557	9	32
20	Washington	29	$643	4	21
21	New York	19	509	10	43
22	Illinois	19	$586	8	4
23	Colorado	22	$637	5	30
24	Alaska	20	$450	10	39
25	Utah	22	$694	2	26
26	North Dakota	10	$479	14	68
27	Kansas	10	$591	8	33
28	Ohio	18	$544	6	4
29	Iowa	9	$362	20	40
30	Nebraska	7	$466	14	53
31	Alabama	14	$506	7	41
32	Arizona	19	$576	2	15
33	Montana	11	$472	9	45
34	Minnesota	15	$542	5	31
35	Indiana	13	$480	7	20
36	North Carolina	13	$336	10	11
37	Texas	11	$682	1	15
38	Delaware	19	$486	4	19
39	Arkansas	9	$543	5	19
40	Kentucky	10	$434	7	30
41	Nevada	14	$536	1	21
42	Wyoming	8	$356	9	54
43	Vermont	17	$418	5	46
44	Idaho	5	$427	8	36
45	Virginia	10	$430	5	19
46	Maryland	11	$356	5	20
47	Oregon	7	$268	5	25
48	Florida	8	$351	2	37
49	Georgia	5	$275	4	34
50	Tennessee	5	$194	4	16