Study: Minnesotans face 2nd worst traffic congestion

A study released Thursday says motorists in California, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina face some of the worst traffic congestion in the United States.

Roads in North Dakota and South Carolina rated highest in the study's overall rankings, while New Jersey roads ranked the lowest. Montana highways were ranked as the deadliest in the nation.

While Minnesota was the second worst in terms of congestion, it ranked fairly well overall.

Rick Krueger Executive Director of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance describes that as ?pretty sad.? His group lobbies for improved transportation. And Krueger adds ?Minnesota?s usually in the top ten in terms of state rankings, not the bottom ten. But we've had this long history now, almost 20 years of inattention to investing in transportation. It catches up to you.?

But Minnesota's Department of Transportation says its 2006 Congestion Report found a slight decrease in congestion three years in a row.

It was not all bad news for Minnesota in the Reason Foundation report. The report ranked Minnesota 13th in overall performance ratings. And Minnesota?s rural interstates are in the best condition in the country. And our state had the 4th lowest fatality rate.

The study is based on data from 1984 through 2005. It found that while road conditions have improved in recent years, traffic congestion and highway fatalities have increased slightly.

Wisconsin was ranked 22nd overall; Iowa 35th; South Dakota 11th and North Dakota 1st.

The state-by-state evaluation of highways was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and financed by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles.

With the federal highway fund running short of money for major highway projects, state governments are faced with having to pick up a greater share of the cost of building and maintaining highways.

Dr. David T. Hartgen, the highway study's lead author, says the results show that states need to prioritize, directing their transportation money to projects specifically designed to reduce congestion.

"Gridlock isn't going away," Hartgen said.

The study ranked highway systems in each state according to their cost-effectiveness, which was determined with several factors including traffic fatalities, congestion, pavement condition, bridge condition, highway maintenance and administrative costs. Evaluations were done on highways and all state-owned roads.

The five states with the most cost-effective roads, according to the study, are North Dakota, South Carolina, Kansas, New Mexico and Montana. The bottom five states are New Jersey, Alaska, New York, Rhode Island and Hawaii.

The study found that traffic fatalities rose by less than 1 percent between 2004 and 2005. Montana had the deadliest roads, with 2.3 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Massachusetts roads were the safest, with 0.8 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles.

Congestion rose by a similar amount. According the study, almost 52 percent of the nation's urban interstate highways were regularly congested in 2005, the last year included in the evaluation.

In a statement, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said congestion has nearly tripled in metropolitan areas during the past 25 years despite increases in spending over that period. Resolving the issue has been a priority for the department, which last year announced a plan to combat gridlock through long-terms investments in key corridors.

"It's so important to get our transportation policies headed in the right direction -- away from the federal government and back to the states and localities where innovation in America has always originated," she said.

Congress will have to find new sources of revenue if it wants to tackle the problems, said Matt Jeanneret, spokesman for American Road and Transportation Builders Association. His group estimates that Americans spend 47 hours a year stuck in traffic.

"This illustrates the capacity crisis that is facing this country, which is only going to get worse if trends stay the same," Jeanneret said. "We are bursting at the seams with motor vehicles and we're not adding capacity to that."

Janet Kavinoky, who works on transportation issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says the nation's traffic woes are at crisis levels. "There's more bad news coming," she said. "You hate holiday traffic? Pretty soon it's going to be business as usual."

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