Gov. Kathleen Sebelius once got into trouble for telling a disparaging joke about Missouri’s roads, but as many motorists already know, she had truth on her side. According to the Reason Foundation’s 16th annual report, Kansas has the third-best roads in the nation (behind only North Dakota and South Carolina), compared with 17th-ranked Missouri. Something to think about as the state gears up to debate another long-term transportation plan.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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17 Comments
Compared to some states I’ve lived in, I would have to agree with that assessment.
When I lived in the Midwest U.S., there were potholes that could swallow up motorcycles!!!
What does North Dakota’s top ranking mean? Highways to Nowhere.
Reason’s type of analysis, weighting traffic congestion over any other factor, naturally favors states without major cities over states with major cities. Of Reason’s top 10 rated states, only one, Georgia has a city large enough to support an NFL or Major League team. The top 10 are North Dakota, South Carolina, Kansas, New Mexico, Montana, Georgia, Wyoming, Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho. Washington state’s highway system is every bit as good as it’s neighbor Oregon’s. But Seattle’s massive daily commuter snarl knocks it out of contention. Florida and California vs. next-door Georgia and Nevada. The first two have built and repeatedly expanded excellent freeway systems, with free-flowing traffic–until developers follow suit, build megaburbs and new settlers clog the arteries.
Missouri would have great roads if it didn’t have over 2 million people living in the greater St. Louis area, and nearly 2 million in the KC greater area, with hundreds of thousands of workers commuting into and out of each city every day, hundreds of trucks delivering industrial goods and consumer products, traveling salesmen, et al.
High traffic rates create not only congestion, but high roadwear rates. Missouri spends a lot of more money for road maintenance than Kansas per mile per year, but with far higher usage than Kansas roads experience, they can’t keep the potholes filled.
Uncongested highways bear a strong statistical correlation with below national median population densities, college education rates, and household incomes. How great is that?
Bottom line: despite Reason’s giving California a bottom-10 rating for highways, it’s not likely the foundation or magazine staff is going to relocate from Los Angeles to North Dakota to get shorter trips between home and work.
MPS: Thanks for clarifying that suspicious analysis that put Kansas roadways in the top three states. As the saying goes, “the devil’s in the details.” Rating a state’s roadways on the basis of traffic congestion is one factor, but obviously not the most important.
On that basis, Greensburg might be rated #1 among Kansas cities because of least traffic congestion in Kansas!
Great photo. Long and straight, right to the horizon. Flat out here, ain’t it?
Incidentally, speaking of Kansas roadways, I have been told more than once about an alternative route for east Kellogg improvement that was considered years ago but turned down. Of course, the route chosen was right down the old right of way of Highway 54/Kellogg.
The alternative would have been to move the road south of present Kellogg. Going eastward, the route would have turned southeasterly somewhere east of downtown Wichita, for example east of the cemetery, and parallel the existing right-of-way by several blocks, all the way to the Turnpike entrance.
Of course, that would have taken a lot of houses and businesses back in the 1970’s but that pain would be gone by now. Construction of East Kellogg could have proceeded a lot faster without the need to continue traffic through the construction site. Those businesses along Kellogg would have continued to have better access than now with the improvement.
Anybody remember that controversy? I wasn’t around. But I remember that Kellogg has been torn up for decades now.
Also concrete flyovers have a relatively short life of some 40 or 50 years so the less concrete flyover structures the better.
One place I notice the difference is driving on I-70 to St Louis. As soon as you hit Missouri, the road turns into a mess. Since the traffic level didn’t change, it has to be level of maintenance.
It’s been a while since I have driven that streatch outlander but I remember it looking like a bombed-out trail. HORRIBLE between KC and StL.
Anecdotally, having traveled extensively through KS, MO, OK, TX, GA, NC, SC, PA and lived in several of those, Kansas is defintely one of the best as far as road quality and maintenance; Texas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania are at the bottom of that list, IMO. The quality of the secondary roads is telling, and those states have poor secondary roads with no shoulder and a tepstry of patches the likes of which you rarely find in KS. Missouri is not as bad as PA in my experience, but not aanywhere near as good as KS, which i would also put above South Carolina.
In fact, I sometimes get irritated because they seem to work on some roads that did not have problems to start with (all the work on 135 between Wichita and Salina two years ago–what was wrong with it?)
High taxes = Lower economic growth = Less congestion = Higher Tolls
Oh we absolutely have better roads. And it’s not just between KC and ST. Louis, but south to Joplin too on 71.
Missouri has rural areas just like we do. And their roads are awful no matter where you’re at.
It’s good that the roads in KS are rated so highly – the better for getting out of the state if (and when) the opportunity arises.
BFAH-
I have lived in Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Angeles, Savannah, and the Atlanta metro area. With the possible exception of the Atlanta area, I’ll take Kansas anytime.
LJ,
I’m happy that you like it here. I too have “lived around” – Houston, Allentown, PA, Boston, Wichita, of course. To me the NE and mid-Atlantic states are far more pleasant – weather-wise, attitude-wise (much more tolerant), things-to-do wise and job-wise than Wichita…Houston was the worst.
I haven;t really been in the NE, and San Diego was the best weather I have ever lived in, but it is just waay too crowded. Lots to do, granted. but just waaay too crowded. LA and SanFrancisco, interesting, but as far as the tolerance issue, yeah, they tolerate anything, but they don’t even know their neighbors name and could care less. LA is also pretty damn phony. Beamers outside of high dollar houses that have no furniture because it doesn;t show. LA is all about appearances, substance really matters little.
I can speak about Kansas roads, because I’ve been on every single paved highway road in the state. You name it, I’ve been there.
One thing is that Kansas does pay for the good roads. We have a slightly higher fuel tax than surrounding states.
We pay $.24 a gallon compared to $.16 for Oklahoma (which have terrible roads) and $.17 for Missouri.
Here is something that you may not know. The state of Kansas is number 4th in the Nation for the miles of paved road. Not only do we have good roads, we have a lot of them. This is due to the agriculture community and having paved roads for farmers, which they use frequently (mind you they don’t pay taxes on their farm diesel, and it’s non-highway use at that).
We have a great jobs program for rural Kansas through KDOT and that they have over 3,000 employees that take care of our road system (not counting sub-contractors they actually hire to do the work.)
But we have a on schedule road maintenance program. Meaning that we re-pave roads on a regular schedule basis, regardless if it really needs it or not. Sometimes if you travel throughout Kansas you will often see a re-paving crew paving a stretch of road that is already perfect in the first place.
Most Transportation Departments in other states usually do a “condition base only” for determining repaving.
We do have great roads. Although there are a few spots, it isn’t nothing like Missouri (as everybody is saying) Oklahoma and even worse Colorado (if you don’t use I-70).
“High taxes = Lower economic growth = Less congestion = Higher Tolls”
This is interesting logic. Last I checked California and NYC were two of the highest-tax areas in the country, but it seems they were doing pretty well as far as economic growth compared to the low-tax environs of Kansas.
I don’t think creating economic growth is as simple as just lowering taxes. If so Alaska would be just booming right now.
What does knowing your neighbor’s name have to do with the quality of life in a particular city? I lived in large urban areas my entire life before Wichita and never knew my neighbor’s names and everything was just fine. I find it much more annoying to live next to people that think they have some right to intrude on your life just because you live in the same vicinity.
It freaked me and my wife out when we moved in to our house and people just started dropping by unannounced to “get to know us”. We are in the habit of not even answering the door for people that we don’t know, but the Kansans in our neighborhood would never get the message and just leave.