Friday Interview: Are Highways Crumbling? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The authors of this post are the staff for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    Transportation expert Hartgen compares N.C., other states

    RALEIGH  -  When you drive over uneven pavement or hit a pothole on a North Carolina road, you might wonder whether drivers in other states face better or worse driving conditions. Dr. David Hartgen of The Hartgen Group, emeritus professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, addresses that topic in a recent report. It's titled "Are Highways Crumbling?" Hartgen prepared it in cooperation with the Reason Foundation, a California-based libertarian think tank. Hartgen discussed his findings with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

    Kokai: Listeners in North Carolina, I'm sure, have all encountered on one highway or another some problem and said, "Gee, won't someone fix this?" And if they thought about it a step further, they might've said, "Well, how does North Carolina compare? Are our roads any better than other states?" First of all, tell us what "Are Highways Crumbling?" tells us about our roads across the country.

    Hartgen: Well, very interesting. It shows that, surprisingly so, our highways are actually in quite good shape. And in this study we looked back almost 20 years to the late 1980s and looked at how every state has performed since then. And, interestingly enough, as a whole, the U.S. has improved on all seven of the performance measures that we looked at. And many states, including South Carolina, have improved on most of those measures.

    North Carolina improved on four of the seven measures that we looked at, particularly on bridge conditions, where we reduced the percentage of deficient bridges. And on our fatal accident rate, we've improved a great deal. And even on congestion, we've made a little bit of improvement. Now where we have not improved so much is on the condition of the interstate system, which has deteriorated a bit compared to where it was 20 years ago. And particularly that's due to continuing problems on Interstate 95 and on some of our older interstates that were built, frankly, in the '50s and '60s. They're now approaching the end of their useful lives.

    Kokai: You mentioned South Carolina has improved on most of the measures, North Carolina [on] about half of them - or slightly more than half - have improved. The others we have not. How does North Carolina compare to the other states in terms of this rate of improvement?

    Hartgen: Well, North Carolina has improved, but many other states have improved more than we have. Those states, however, generally spend more than we do. We've spent only about a third per mile-of-responsibility that the average state spends, and considering that this is a thin budget that we have, and a relatively large system, we've actually done a quite good job here of improving the system in spite of that limited resource and in spite of the increasing traffic and the increasing population.

    Kokai: Now, someone is going to listen to this and say, "Oh, wait a minute, he just said we don't spend very much on the roads. That means we need to spend a whole heck of a lot more on our roads." Is that what you're saying, or does the money that's being spent now for transportation need to be spent differently?

    Hartgen: Our transportation budget is about $5 billion, and we have the largest state-owned highway system in the country, at 80,000 miles. I suppose more money is always useful, but more importantly than more money, it's making good decisions on how that money is spent, particularly putting it on maintenance and on preservation so we are good stewards now for the system that we're responsible for - so that in the future, our children and grandchildren will have the benefit of that 80,000-mile system in very good shape.

    Kokai: You've looked at the data for all of these highway systems across the country. When you look at what North Carolina is doing, what are some of the things that we're doing particularly well, or things that we just really are missing the boat on in terms of dealing with our highways?

    Hartgen: We have the largest system, as I said. I think we are making considerable progress on two very thorny issues. One is the percentage of deficient bridges. We've made considerable progress in that in the last few years, and have reduced that percentage quite a bit. Another area we've made a lot of progress on is in the fatal accident rate. We used to have, regularly, between 1,500 and 1,600 citizens die on our highways annually. Now that number is down to between 1,100 and 1,200. And that's a very significant improvement. Of course we'd like to get it lower, but we're moving in the right direction.

    We've not done quite so well on maintaining the condition of our pavements, and that has to do partially with how we allocate funds to the districts and counties of the state and partially how we make decisions on which projects to move forward. As the new administration comes in, and those issues are discussed and are reviewed, I'm hoping we'll make significant progress there also. [Editor's note: After this interview, the McCrory administration proposed and the General Assembly approved a plan to rewrite North Carolina's transportation funding formula.]

    Kokai: Looking at your report, are there some other states that North Carolina could emulate that would really help our highway system?

    Hartgen: Not too far away, South Carolina is regularly ranked higher than North Carolina in my annual review of both system condition and on expenditures. And Virginia to our north has also ranked quite well, particularly in the progress that they've made in the last few years. West Virginia has done also quite well, but is very challenging terrain. And Tennessee has also done quite well. So has Georgia. So in our neck of the woods there are actually other states that have done well, and we hope to join them.

    Kokai: Listening to the names of the states that you mentioned, you basically ticked off all of our neighboring states - South Carolina, Virginia, and so on. If North Carolina doesn't do a better job with its highways, are we going to have a hard time competing with these other states that are improving and making better roads?

    Hartgen: All economic recruiting people will tell you that the quality of the highway system is one of the key issues that organizations look at when they're thinking about setting up shop and bringing in new jobs. We have a good, an extensive transportation system here in North Carolina. We need to polish the edges a little bit and be sure that that system is of high enough quality so that our other very attractive features - quality of life we have here, our tax rates generally, our schools, our work force, our climate, of course - that those other features then tip the balance for us.

    Kokai: We've talked to you in the past about some of the other pieces of transportation, including the controversial issue of light rail for the Charlotte area, for the Triangle. To the extent that people are focusing on rail, does that hurt the amount of attention and money that's going to the highway systems that people actually use?

    Hartgen: The attention hasn't hurt, and we have not significantly increased the expenditure recently. North Carolina spends about $120 million annually on supporting public transit from the state funds. That's roughly 2 percent of the budget. It's somewhat higher than the share of public commuting in North Carolina, but given the interest we have in improving our transit system, we need to have balance here. We need to ensure that we have access that is provided to our regions with different mobility needs. And on the other side of the ledger, though, we don't want to go over the edge and build systems which are inappropriate for the sizes of the cities that we have or for the potential demand that they might attract.

    Kokai: We've just barely scratched the surface of the report. I've had a chance to look over some of the details, and it's very extensive. If people would like to learn more about the "Are Highways Crumbling?" report, they can find it at your website?

    Hartgen: Yes, it's at my website, hartgengroup.net, or they can go to the Reason website, reason.org.