Texas Lands in National Top 20 in Highway Performance and Cost-Effectiveness

There's nothing like hitting the wide open road, and a new national report says Texas is one of the best places to do so.

According to the Annual Highway Report, the Lonestar state ranked remarkably well due to scores that were good to average in most categories.

What's the Annual Highway Report?

Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-controlled highways in 13 categories, including pavement condition, traffic congestion, structurally deficient bridges, traffic fatalities, and spending (capital, maintenance, administrative, total) per mile.

How Does Texas Rank?

The most recent data is from 2019, which places Texas’ highway system as 16th in the nation in overall cost effectiveness and condition, according to the Annual Highway
Report by Reason Foundation.

Texas jumped up two spots from the previous report where the state ranked 18th.

Texas’ best rankings are in percent structurally deficient bridges (2nd) and administrative disbursements (12th). Texas’ worst rankings are in urbanized area congestion (40th) and urban fatality rate (40th).

We Spend A Lot of Time In Traffic

Despite the fact that Texas’ state-controlled highway mileage makes it the largest highway system in the country, we spend A LOT of time in traffic.

How much exactly?

On average Texas commuters spend 23.42 hours stuck in traffic congestion, ranking 40th nationally. For comparison, California commuters spend approximately 27.17 hours while folks in Montana only spend 4.90 hours

Get our free mobile app

How Can Texas Improve?

“To improve in the rankings, Texas needs to reduce its urbanized area congestion and its urban fatality rate. The state ranks in the bottom 15 of all states in both categories,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the Annual Highway Report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.

“Texas ranks in the top half of all states in six categories and has no other glaring weaknesses. If the state can reduce urbanized area congestion and urban fatality rate, it can move up significantly in the rankings.”