Utah's highway system, ranked the second most cost-effective in the nation four years ago, now ranks 30th in the country, according to a University of North Carolina-Charlotte study.
That is the state's lowest ranking since 1986 when UNCC professor David T. Hartgen began publishing his annual rating of state highway networks.
Hartgen's study is based on data provided to the federal government by each state's department of transportation.
It compares the states with one another in 17 categories ranging from accident rates and road congestion to money spent on road construction and maintenance.
The current rankings reflect statistics from 1998, the latest year for which data is available. That was the second year the Utah Department of Transportation began spending heavily on the I-15 reconstruction project.
Hartgen's rating system in effect penalizes a state in the process of spending money on improvements. That's because the dollars show up but the improvements do not.
Utah, for example, is ranked 24th in the percentage of its highway bridges that are deficient. But that rating will improve once the I-15 work is completed. The project includes the reconstruction of 114 bridges.
Because of that lapse inherent in the study, Hartgen feels Utah's ranking will improve in two to four years.
"I look forward to seeing the effects of the increased funding in future years, but I hesitate to predict Utah will return to our top 10 anytime soon," Hartgen said.
Utah was ranked fourth in 1997 (based on 1995 data), sixth in 1998 and 25th last year when expenditures from the $1.59 billion I-15 project began showing up in the statistics. Utah now ranks between 28th and 40th nationally in several spending categories.
"This is a balancing act. States are always juggling the amount of money they have for maintenance and capital work against the overall condition of the system," Hartgen said. "You can be so intensely involved in a single, large project that there aren't enough funds or resources available to manage the rest of the system."
Utah ranks 30th in condition of rural interstates, 33rd in condition of urban interstates, 16th in condition of rural primary routes, 17th in congestion and 28th in overall accident rates.
Hartgen noted accident rates have increased along with the state's population in the 1990s.
"The Western states have generally performed quite well over the years in my study but now I'm beginning to see time and traffic taking its toll," Hartgen said. "Particularly, the interstate system is now coming around to the end of its useful life."
UDOT executive director Tom Warne said Hartgen's report is not highly regarded in the public transportation sector because it fails to consider mitigating circumstances.
It is unfair to compare maintenance expenditures for states like Utah and
Arizona, for example, because much of Utah's maintenance money is spent on snow removal, Warne said. Arizona can spend less and receive a higher ranking in Hartgen's survey simply because of its climate, Warne noted.
Arizona was ranked 11th in maintenance expenditures behind other fair-weather states like South Carolina (first), Mississippi (sixth) and Georgia (ninth). Utah was ranked 28th.
Warne noted the study also does not consider the fact that California's DOT has spent millions of dollars on seismic retrofits for its bridges. Other states don't have to do that. California's spending on bridge retrofits helped drop it to 44th overall.
"I think the idea of comparing one state to another is OK, I'm not concerned about that, but I think you have to go about it in a way where the data is meaningful," Warne said. "It's good if you could boil it down to facts that are truly comparable from one state to another."
The Federal Highway Administration has been talking about doing just that for several years now. And the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is pushing for a national performance rating system.
Warne, president of the officials' association this year, said he is far more affected by what his department's own internal "scoreboard" says about Utah's performance than where Hartgen's study ranks the state.
"We did not celebrate necessarily when we were No. 2, and I'm not overly concerned that we are 30th," he said.
Warne noted that for the past three years UDOT has completed all of the projects on its annual Statewide Transportation Improvement Program. Five years ago, only 27 percent of the projects on that list were completed, he said.
UDOT also has made significant reductions in the amount of money its spends on construction engineering and other overhead costs, he said.
You can reach Zack Van Eyck by e-mail at zman@desnews.com.