In fiscal 2010, the states spent an estimated $131 billion on transportation. What return did they get on their investment? Most policy makers can’t tell you. That’s because most states have inadequate systems for setting goals and measuring performance, concludes a new report by the Pew Center for the States and the Rockefeller Foundation, “Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results.”
Fortunately, Virginia is an exception to the norm. The Old Dominion is one of only six states in the country (the others were Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri and Oregon) that scored a rating of “leading the way” on all six criteria chosen by the authors: safety, jobs and commerce, mobility, access, environmental stewardship and infrastructure preservation.
We Virginians may not have the road system we’d like but at least we have a better idea of how well or how poorly it’s measuring up than most other states do. Even so, our performance criteria and data quality are far from perfect. Even the “leaders” can improve by adopting best practices found in other states.
Bacon’s bottom line: Every transportation project in the state should be rated and evaluated on the basis of standard performance criteria. Every project should have a projected Public Return on Investment. All projects should be prioritized based on their expected Public ROI. And the process should be made totally transparent to the public.
Map code:
Green states – leading the way
Yellow states – mixed results
Red states – trailing behind
