The Baltimore Examiner Newspaper
2008-08-05 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Marylanders pay higher prices for mediocre-quality roads, according to a study released last week. The Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, ranked Maryland 38th of the 50 states in its cost-effectiveness in maintaining good roads and bridges, stemming congestion, and lowering accident rates on state-owned roads in its analysis of data from 1984 to 2006.

That’s four slots lower than its 2000 ranking.

Anyone who drives the highways in and around Baltimore City probably wonders why the ranking isn’t lower, given the constant state of disrepair and huge potholes on area roads and poor access to major highways. The decrepit state of many Baltimore City-controlled roads is an entirely separate issue worth analyzing.

The study gave its lowest marks to Maryland for capital/bridge disbursements per mile and urban interstate congestion (46th), followed closely by maintenance disbursements per mile (45th) and receipts per mile of responsibility (42nd). Bringing up its score were high ranks for its low fatality rate (ninth) and good condition of its rural roads (21st.)

Compared with Virginia, it looks even worse. Our neighbor, which maintains a highway system 10 times larger than Maryland’s, ranked in the top third of states. As the study said, “Virginia has a good system condition managed on a thin budget.”

These rankings are based on data before Gov. Martin O’Malley’s time. But it should prompt him and Secretary of Transportation John Porcari to review how the Department of Transportation  spends its money and whether the findings still hold true. Last week O’Malley spoke at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., extolling the fiscal responsibility of his administration.

“In Maryland,” he boasted in the news release for the event, “we have tried to practice a different kind of politics — the ‘politics of posterity’ — to make decisions — sometimes very hard decisions — based on our shared values. ...”

Based on the study’s results, those results seem like a lot of hot air in this very hot summer.

Before he extols the virtues of his policies outside the state, he owes Marylanders an explanation for why we must pay almost six times as much per mile of state highways as Virginia and still drive on poorer-quality roads.