Here’s Why Virginia Has the Best Highways in the Country

Although drivers stuck in I-95’s infamous traffic might not know it, Virginia actually has the best highways in the country. That’s according to the Reason Foundation’s 29th Annual Highway Report, released Thursday. Thanks to its smart cost-benefit analysis to pick its highway projects, excellent bridge work, safe highways, and innovative uses of tolls, Virginia took home the top spot in the report’s ranking.

The report examines the condition of the 50 state highway systems in 13 different categories. Four measure spending; four measure pavement quality; four measure safety (with three examining fatality rate and one detailing bridge quality); and one measures urbanized traffic congestion. Each of these categories is weighted equally and totaled, to determine a final score for each state, with the highest-scoring state ranking first and the lowest 50th.

In this year’s report, Virginia places first, followed by Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Ohio. Bringing up the rear are Alaska, California, Washington, New York, and Louisiana.

Officials in states that don’t perform well are always asking why their state is lagging and what policies that have worked for other states can they adopt. Over time, states do substantially improve or decline in the rankings. For example, 10 years ago Georgia ranked 26th. Thanks to targeted spending, good project selection, and a restructured Department of Transportation (DOT), this year it ranks second.

Therefore, it is worth examining what the highest-ranking states do well to see what practices can be duplicated across the country. Let’s examine first-place Virginia and see what other states can learn from the Old Dominion State.

First, Virginia has a comprehensive cost-benefit selection tool labeled Smart Scale that the state uses to select and score projects in its Transportation Plan. The process has five steps: Eligibility, Application, Project Screening, Evaluation, and Programming.

What Smart Scale (and a similar process in North Carolina) does is ensure transportation revenue is being spent on the most needed projects. For example, widening State Road 100 would reduce delay by 100 hours but cost $10 million, while widening State Road 200 would reduce delay by 150 hours but cost $20 million. While the second project would have a bigger impact, it would cost twice as much. Under a quantitative selection process, the state would choose the first option, but in other cases, including in a more political decision-making process, the state might choose the second. Yet the $10 million the state did not spend could be better directed to other projects.

With this approach, Virginia is able to spend relatively little (second lowest in Capital Disbursements, fourth lowest in Other Disbursements) and still obtain good pavement conditions (ranking in the top 20 in three of the four categories). States that minimize costs and maximize infrastructure quality perform best in this report. This ability is the leading reason why Virginia ranks No. 1.

But not any cost-benefit selection process will do. States’ tools need to be effective. California and Washington, two states with project prioritization tools that still manage to rank in the bottom five of the overall rankings, have been criticized by the Federal Highway Administration for not having viable, long-term transportation plans and a transparent evaluation process.

Second, Virginia is a leader in how it innovates, implements, and maintains bridges. It is one of the first states to use jointless bridge design and 3D modeling. It also completes regular maintenance on bridges, extending their life cycle and decreasing repair costs. In the last 15 years, the state has reduced its percentage of structurally deficient bridges by over 50 percent. Maintaining bridges is one of the top priorities of any state DOT. Contrast this with Iowa and West Virginia, which have been slow to adopt innovative procedures and are not keeping up with maintenance needs.

Third, for a largely rural state, Virginia also has a low fatality rate. Generally, more urbanized states, such as Massachusetts, have lower fatality rates than more rural states, such as Wyoming, because vehicles are traveling fewer miles at slower speeds. Virginia’s low fatality rate is due to roadway design, including good visibility, straight distances, moderate lane widths, and rigorous enforcement. Rigorous enforcement has its problems. Historically, the state overcriminalized traffic violations (driving over 80 miles per hour was a felony) and targeted minorities in its traffic enforcement. However, that enforcement does lead to safer roadways. Contrast this with nearby South Carolina, which does an excellent job in many categories, but ranks in the bottom 10 of all states in all three fatality categories.

Finally, even in traffic congestion, where the state performs the worst, Virginia has several innovative approaches. In northern Virginia, the state has built a network of variably priced optional toll lanes called managed lanes. Since those lanes are new capacity, they reduce traffic congestion for drivers who use the lanes and those who use the free lanes. And those lanes help pay for themselves, reducing capital expenditures. I-66, inside the beltway, used a similar pricing concept but for the entire highway. The section of highway is the only corridor-based congestion-priced facility in the nation.

The state has also been a leader in innovative delivery in building new managed lanes. The state used a public-private partner to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain all of the northern Virginia managed lanes. This helps transfer some risks to the private operator, reducing overall costs to the state, and bringing innovation, which leads to a better overall project. It also sped up project construction, allowing new capacity 20 or more years sooner than if the state built the lanes itself. Virginia is now expanding managed lanes to the Hampton Roads area. Contrast this with Illinois and Massachusetts, which have failed to build any managed lanes, or Texas, which has been hostile to public-private partnerships.

Operating a good state highway system takes strong leadership, a project priority tool, and a culture of innovation. But it’s not rocket science. States at the bottom of the ranking can follow the lead of states at the top of the ranking, such as Virginia, to improve their highway systems.