Md. roads rated among worst

The Reason Foundation released its 19th annual Highway Report on Thursday, ranking each state in 11 categories such as congestion, pavement condition and costs per mile. Maryland was among 10 states that received the lowest rankings.

Based in Los Angeles, the Reason Foundation is a nonpartisan public policy research organization.

"Basically, we're looking to see how states spend their highway dollars and how efficient they are and how efficient they are in producing a good system," said study author David Hartgen, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

"Overall, it is a challenging (situation) … with a lot of (states) with a lot of truck traffic, but they have made progress over the last few years."

The report is based on 2008 data, the latest available from state agencies. North Dakota gets the top rating, followed by Montana, Kansas, New Mexico and Nebraska. These states were lauded for modest congestion, low fatality rates and interstate highways with well-maintained surfaces.

Aside from Maryland, the worst states include Rhode Island, Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and New Jersey. The study cited them for problems including deficient bridges and poorly maintained interstate highways.

The study - conducted annually since 1984 - notes that in 2008 overall automobile travel fell nearly 4 percent and federal stimulus funding contributed to additional spending on highway improvements.

Maryland could do more to improve the 5,400 miles of its highway system, Hartgen said.

Officials from the State Highway Administration said they were aware of the results, and blamed Maryland's poor scores on the study's methodology.

The study ranked states with little traffic higher than those that include urban areas, said David Buck, an SHA spokesman. He said that Maryland has reduced the number of deficient bridges from 143 to 107, and its fatality rate - which is affected by drunken driving - has dropped from 40 percent five years ago to 25 percent now.

"The study … favors the top 10 or 15 states that have next to no traffic," Buck said. "Obviously, based on the fact that we have Washington, D.C., Frederick, Annapolis (and Baltimore), we have a tremendous amount of traffic. Unfortunately, what the study looks at and rates favorably is when (states) have little traffic."

The study's writers acknowledge in their report that rural states tend to perform better, but note that several larger urban states like Missouri and Georgia also ranked in the top 10. Factors such as terrain, climate, system age and budget priorities contribute to overall performance.

For the last four years the study has been conducted, Maryland has placed in the bottom half of the state ranking. The 2008 results gave it an overall rank of 43, down from 41 in 2007.

Within the overall scores, Maryland came in first for rural interstate condition, 18th for fatality rates and 25th for narrow rural lanes. Its lower rankings were for urban interstate congestion, where it came in 48th, and capital spending and bridge disbursements, 47th.

Buck said he believed Maryland would fare about the same in the foundation's next study, since it uses the same methodology. But he said the state has received $319 million in stimulus funding it has used for resurfacing projects, and other system preservation efforts.

"We put a tremendous investment in our roads in Maryland," Buck said. The roads "get beat up and between the truck traffic and the fact that we have blizzards in the winter and 100 degrees in the summer … and the pounding the road take from traffic. We have to do more to upkeep our roads and bridges. (Other states) don't have to do as much."

Hartgen wasn't sure about how Maryland would fare in future studies, which will use 2009 and 2010 data.

"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be a highway commissioner today," Hartgen said. "It's a challenging position to be in."