“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 their departments of transportation.
States like California that rely less on more politicized processes to select projects tend to rank much lower on the report. Despite being one of the highest spending states, it has some of the worst pavement quality, worst traffic congestion, and an uninspiring safety record.
“You can spend above average if everything else in your system is good and still get an excellent ranking,” says Feigenbaum, pointing to Utah (which scored eighth on the report) as an example. The state’s spending is on the high side, but it also ranks highly on pavement quality, safety, and congestion.
States like California and New Jersey both spend a lot of money for no apparent improvement in performance.”