Louisiana Voice

No sooner than we post a story about Louisiana’s ranking DEAD LAST OF ALL 50 STATES than up pops yet another survey that has us buried at the bottom of the pile.

That’s the way it is in good ol’ Loozeraner: we can just never get enough of a good thing.

We’re unable to offer a link to this story in The Washington Post because that publication has a paywall, but there’s a story in today’s edition that reports the results of a survey of the road systems in every state and the results should come as no surprise to anyone:

Louisiana ranks 46^th out of 50 state highway systems.

Who, pray tell, ranks lower? Well, Alaska ranks 50^th to hold down the dead-last anchor position but it’s a well-established fact that the best way to get around in Alaska is by airplane because so much of the state is impossible to navigate by automobile. So, no surprise there.

But New York at 47^th? might come as something of a surprise.

Washington State is 48^th but the biggest surprise might be that California is ranked next-to-last in 49^th place.

So, Louisiana can perhaps take pride in the knowledge that it beat out two of the highest-taxed states in the nation in at least one survey.

As a side note, I once attended a conference in New Orleans. Also in attendance was a person from Detroit. I asked her how she like dodging the street potholes in New Orleans and she replied that she would gladly swap Detroit streets for those in the Crescent City. To tell the truth, that shocked me; I didn’t think there were worse streets than New Orleans anywhere.

But back to our latest survey, because there’s more to reveal.

Four states have more than 5 percent of rural interstate roads in poor conditions. Louisiana is not one of them, but it’s pretty darn close. Alaska, as expected, is worst with 10.86 percent of its rural interstate classified as in poor condition, followed by California (7.29 percent), Colorado (7.21 percent) and Arizona (5.1 percent). Louisiana is a solid 5^th place with 4.55 percent of it rural interstate system deemed to be in poor shape.

Four states also have more than 20 percent of urban arterial roads in poor condition. Again, Louisiana is not one of the four, but our state does make it in the bottom 10 percent. California is worst with 32 percent of urban arterial roads in crappy condition, followed by Nebraska (28 percent), Rhode Island (27 percent) and New York (25 percent). Louisiana comes in ninth worst with 17 percent of its urban arterial roads classified as in poor condition.

Where’s Alaska, you ask? Well, bear in mind Alaska has precious few urban arterial roads to begin with, so there’s that.

One thing the survey did find: high gas taxes don’t necessary correlate with good roads. California, for example, has the highest per-gallon gasoline tax in the country at 71 cents, followed by Washington State at 59 cents per gallon and both states rank near the bottom in the quality of their roads. Louisiana taxes motorists 21 cents per gallon for gasoline, seventh-lowest in the country. Alaska has the lowest per-gallon tax on gasoline at just 9 cents.

Of course, that statistic can be misleading because gasoline taxes and other user fees (like tolls) account for only about half of state and local road spending with the remainder coming from general revenue.

But, tax rates and highway conditions aside, here’s a statistic that will blow some away, particularly those of you who work in Baton Rouge and New Orleans but live in the suburbs: The time lost while commuting in peak-hour congestion.

The typical Louisiana driver loses three days per year sitting in commuter traffic. In Texas, drivers spend on average 4.6 days per year in traffic, thanks in large part to cities like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Fort Worth. In California, drivers lose 6.2 days, primarily because of the impossible traffic of Los Angeles.

But that’s nothing compared to New Jersey where drivers lose a whopping 10.6 days per year in commuting. That’s a little north of two full work weeks.

But I’m not surprised. In my only trip to that neck of the woods, I tried to get from Jersey into New York City and ended up back at the same toll booth in Orange, N.J. (count ‘em) four times, paying a toll each time. After the fourth trip, the toll taker commented he knew me so well by then he was going to have to invite me to his home for dinner.

Paraphrasing W.C. Fields’s remark about Philadelphia, I spent a year in Jersey one day.