Report: California Continues To Spend a Lot of Money on Poor Quality Roads
Despite the enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021, which included $350 billion for federal highway programs, America’s highway quality and spending in recent years haven’t seen major changes.
There’s been a small uptick in spending, a small uptick in highway quality, and a small decrease in congestion. But a revolution on America’s roads this is not.
“Things are pretty much steady,” says Baruch Feigenbaum, the senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website) and lead author of its latest annual highway report.
The 2025 report ranks state highway systems across a range of metrics, including capital and maintenance spending, rural and urban pavement quality, traffic congestion, bridge quality, and safety.
Similar to reports in recent years, North Carolina and Virginia continue to be top performers, respectively ranking first and fourth on this year’s report. (Virginia was ranked first on last year’s report.)
Both states scored high on pavement quality and relatively low highway spending. Feigenbaum chalks this up to these states using quantitative metrics to select highway projects and having dedicated maintenance units within
Article from Reason.com
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