Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s pledge to “fix the damn roads” is falling short while lawmakers grapple with a long-term funding plan.
Michigan’s rural and urban interstates are in worse condition than most states despite the state’s overall ranking improving, according to the Reason Foundation’s 28th Annual Highway Report.
“Michigan should focus on improving both rural and urban interstate pavement conditions,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, the Reason Foundation’s senior managing director of transportation policy and report’s lead author. “The state ranks in the bottom 15 in both categories.”
According to the Reason Foundation’s report, Michigan ranked 23rd out of 50 states for overall highway condition and cost-effectiveness. Michigan improved four spots, up from 27th in the 2023 report. The state was 30th in the nation in 2019. The report, published this month, ranks the 50 states on various measures using 2022 data.
But two of Michigan’s immediate neighbors also did better: Ohio (10th) and Indiana (20th). Two other nearby states did worse: Wisconsin (26th) and Illinois (36th).
And state officials can’t blame it on winter’s freeze-thaw cycle, temperature extremes and salt spread during the winters. States with snowy winters still scored better than Michigan, including North Dakota (3rd), Minnesota (7th) Connecticut (13th) and Idaho (15th).
Reason Foundation’s 28th Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-controlled highways in 13 categories, including pavement and bridge conditions, traffic fatalities, and spending.
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In safety and condition categories, Michigan’s highways rank:
- 41st in urban Interstate pavement condition
- 38th in rural Interstate pavement condition
- 33rd in urban arterial pavement condition
- 16th in rural arterial pavement condition
- 43rd in structurally deficient bridges
- 24th in urban fatality rate
- 3rd in rural fatality rate
This comes after Whitmer made fixing Michigan’s roads her 2018 campaign pledge.
And lawmakers continue to grapple with a long-term funding solution for road repairs. According to the nonpartisan Lansing firm Public Sector Consultants, Michigan’s annual road funding shortfall is over $3.9 billion.
Last week, House Republicans approved a plan they say will raise an extra $3.1 billion annually to fix Michigan roads without raising taxes. However, the nine-bill plan is opposed by most Democrats, who say it would force cuts to other important programs and face almost certain changes before Whitmer would sign it into law, the Detroit Free Press reported.
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Michigan’s roads and bridges were in worse shape than most states. The Reason report ranked its rural and urban interstates 38th and 41st, respectively, for pavement conditions.
Ohio ranked 12 spots higher than Michigan on urban interstates. In the category of highways that are not interstates, Michigan did significantly better than the national average (16th) for the share of rural arterials that were in poor condition. However, its urban arterial pavement was lower than average (33rd).
Michigan ranked near the bottom (43rd) for the percentage of bridges that were structurally deficient (11.22%). It performed worse than Illinois, with a lower overall score; 9.02% of its bridges were deemed structurally deficient.
“Reducing the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the state should also be a priority, as the state ranks in the bottom 10 in this crucial safety category as well,” Feigenbaum noted.
Despite tackling the roads for six years, Michigan’s damn roads still aren’t fixed to national standards and they’re not on pace to meet that 90% good-and-fair-condition target in the next five years.
And commuters keep footing the bill for tires and rims due to potholes.
By Whitmer’s own admission during her first term, the average driver spent $500 per year on vehicle fixes due to the poor quality of Michigan roads. Her initial plan hinged on a 45-cent gas tax increase, opposed by residents and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, that would have raised $2.47 billion annually in new dedicated road funding.
Much of the recent road construction has been paid for thanks partly to the influx of federal dollars via the bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And local roads are still being neglected.
“This administration’s focus on roads the past couple of years has been just on state highways,” said Republican House Speaker-elect Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, in the MLive report. “We have been listening to our neighbors and local officials who know things aren’t getting fixed and that our local communities haven’t been a priority.”