The Reason Foundation's 17th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems found that North Dakota does the best job maintaining its roads and bridges and New Jersey has the worst-performing, least cost-effective highway system in the nation.
Massachusetts' roads are the safest; Montana's are the deadliest.

The study, by University of North Carolina at Charlotte Emeritus Transportation Professor David Hartgen, measures the condition of all state-owned roads and highways from 1984 to 2006.

The study calculates the effectiveness and performance of each state in 12 different categories, including pavement condition, bridge condition, traffic fatalities, congestion, highway maintenance costs, and administrative costs.

The report also found that across the country, 24.1 percent of bridges are deficient or functionally obsolete. In Rhode Island, over 53 percent of bridges are deficient. At our current rate of repair it will take 62 years for today's deficient bridges to be brought up to date.

California has the most traffic congestion: 83 percent of its urban interstates are congested. But other states are becoming increasingly gridlocked: 18 states report at least half of their urban interstates are jammed. Even South Dakota has traffic congestion now.

Full Study: http://www.reason.org/ps369.pdf
State-by-State Rankings: www.reason.org/ps369table02.pdf

Deficient Bridges Rankings: www.reason.org/ps369table14.pdf