More money, no results: How states avoid accountability for crumbling, deadly roads

Two crucial parts of our policy platform are requiring states to set targets to improve safety and the state of repair on their roads and bridges, and then holding them accountable for meeting them. But before we can explain those ideas in depth, it’s vital to understand the deeply flawed approach to “performance management” that Congress created 13 years ago—and how our proposed approach would differ.

A bad trade: A brief history of performance management

Every time anyone wants to justify the massive deficit spending in the federal transportation program, elected officials and transportation leaders make promises about the enormous benefits just right around the corner, if Congress will just cut the check. But we get sold a bill of goods every time. The lofty rhetoric used to justify the enormous deficit spending never matches the reality of how the money gets spent. The country’s civil engineers agree: even after $1.5 trillion spent on surface transportation, things are basically the same.

Thirteen years ago, Congress passed a two-year transportation law called MAP-21. ¹ In that law, Congress made a deal with state DOTs and the broader world of transportation stakeholders: Give them more flexibility to spend (more) federal transportation money however they wish. And in exchange, the public would get more transparency into how they’re spending the money, and be able to hold transportation agencies accountable for making measurable progress on seven core goal areas: ²

Over several years, USDOT worked to establish this new system, soliciting reams of public feedback and finalizing the measures in 2017. But once launched, this program was administered by the “grantees,” not USDOT. States would decide on their targets. What percentage of bridges on the National Highway System in state X should be in poor condition next year? How good or bad should state Y’s pavement be, after spending all of that infrastructure law (IIJA) money? How many people should die on state Z’s roadways next year? States would answer those questions as they set their targets.

States won the flexibility they so prized, but the accountability and transparency promised to taxpayers never materialized.

“Transparency” turned out to be pretty opaque, and “accountability” became a paperwork exercise

Nearly a decade into the implementation of this system, it’s devolved into a box-checking exercise that provides neither greater transparency nor accountability for accomplishing anything tangible.

Transparency doesn’t mean an enormous PDF posted online of transportation projects planned over the next five years. Transparency means making spending decisions clear, accessible, and useful—so people can actually understand what’s happening and why. Real transparency also actively connects the dots. E.g., how does project X move the needle on a state’s safety targets? How will this collection of projects affect a state’s goals to reduce the number of bridges in poor condition? Actual, proactive transparency builds trust, invites accountability, and makes the process feel less like a black box and more like a public promise.

That is, in a word, not what we got with our current system.

Do you want to find and evaluate the transportation projects your state is planning over the next four years? You can probably google and find your state’s Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP), but good luck understanding or being able to decipher the list of projects in it. And while you can probably find the federally required biennial reports with your state’s targets for safety, repair, congestion, etc, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to easily compare those targets to their actual performance. ³

The transparency is bad, but there are two major reasons why the accountability has been even worse.

1) States set targets however they like, including targets to get worse. Most states have set targets within both repair and safety to get worse rather than improve. As one example on repair, Arizona has set targets for their interstates in good condition to decline (pictured below) and for the percent of interstates in poor condition to increase.

On safety, Florida, one of the most deadly states in the country, treats this system like a joke, continually setting targets of zero deaths or deaths/injuries, even though more than 3,200 people outside of vehicles were killed or injured in 2022. ⁴ 12 states in total set targets for more people outside of vehicles to be injured/killed in 2024 compared to 2022.

You might not be able to find Florida’s targets for each year because that purple line is at the bottom. The orange line is reality.

2) States face no penalties for missing the targets they set. As noted above, Florida continues to set targets of zero each year for all traffic fatalities and fatalities + injuries for people outside of vehicles. And when they fail to achieve those targets in pretty astonishing fashion—more than 3,500 people total were killed on their roadways in 2022 instead of their target of zero, there are no penalties or requirements for them to change a single thing about their fundamental approach to transportation producing this carnage. But states don’t have to be as extreme as Florida in this system: they can also just set targets to stay the same or get worse and then outperform them slightly and proclaim success.

AASHTO, the trade group representing state DOTs, believes that this system is a box-checking exercise that does not work “due to lack of appropriate coordination of requirements for target setting methods, timelines, reporting, and consequences of not meeting targets.” They’re not wrong on some of that. But their proposed solution for performance management is comically out of touch: get rid of the system entirely, because they believe funding should not be contingent on performance. (p.15):

Resolved, That transportation funding apportionments or other distributions should not be contingent on achieving performance targets.

AASHTO—an organization currently telling Congress and taxpayers they need to pony up $210 billion in deficit spending for roads and bridges—is saying that “performance” should have no bearing on how much federal transportation money a state gets, even when most of it comes from every single taxpayer, whether they drive or not.

T4America’s proposal: Take this box-checking exercise and make it matter

Congress needs to understand the choice before them. The choice is not between transforming this performance management system into something other than a box-checking exercise OR getting rid of it, as AASHTO would prefer. The choice at hand is between creating a new system of actual accountability and transparency, or scrapping the entire federal transportation program altogether.

That may sound radical, but unlike AASHTO we think positive performance should be intrinsic to the structure of this program. Especially when Congress has “borrowed” money from all taxpayers to prop it up for nearly two decades—$275 billion in general tax dollars since 2008. Here’s our “radical” take: If the transportation agencies taking our money can’t guarantee that they will make measurable improvements that we can easily track and evaluate on core goals like safety and state of repair, they should not get any more of our money. It’s that simple.

Under our approach to measuring performance and setting targets for safety and repair, a few important things would be dramatically different:

• States and MPOs would be required to set targets to improve safety and infrastructure conditions. No more setting targets to get worse or stay the same. 
• States and MPOs would be held accountable for reaching those positive targets by losing flexibility within (or access to) certain federal funding streams. No more missing their own targets without consequences.
• If states/metros can’t make progress on the state of repair and safety, then USDOT will assist them by taking away the distractions, like highly flexible money often used to build new highway capacity that they clearly can’t afford to maintain because their state of repair isn’t improving.
• There would be major improvements on how the performance data and information are presented to the taxpayers footing the bill, to provide real transparency.

So when we start to unpack our policy proposals related to new targets under our first two guiding principles of Fix it First and Prioritize Safety over Speed, understand that we are not talking about reforming/reshaping this existing system, or simply adding new boxes to check.

We are talking about reorienting the entire program and making funding contingent on positive performance. Accomplishing something meaningful and measurable for the American taxpayer and the traveling public should be the bare minimum for this program’s $77 billion a year price tag.

This post is part of our Rethinking reauthorization series, which explores T4America’s detailed policy proposals to replace the existing transportation program and come up with something new and more effective. Organized around our principles—Fix it First, Invest in the Rest, and Safety Over Speed—each post takes a closer look at a specific recommendation we want to see included in the next surface transportation reauthorization bill.