States fail to measure performance of transportation dollars

The Pew Center on the States and the Rockefeller Foundation released their findings on how well states are measuring transportation development. During Fiscal 2010, states spent an estimated $131 billion on transportation in but most are unable to report on the returns from their investments.

The study was done at a time when members of congress are proposing a new surface transportation authorization act. The law would govern federal funding streams for states transportation systems.

The report found that there were major differences among states and their ability to link their spending to how well projects in those states were doing. There were varying levels of success in meeting six key goals in transportation: safety, jobs and commerce, mobility, access, environmental stewardship and infrastructure preservation.

Nicholas Turner is the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation.  He says, in today’s economic times, it’s important that states have the ability to track returns on their transportation investments.

“In today’s every changing fiscal environment and with states spending billions of dollars on transportation, it’s critically important that every dollar delivers a strong return on tax payers investments and that these programs generate the best results and advance states economic growth,” Turner said.

Thirteen states - California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington - are leading the way in tracking their transportation advancements. Nineteen states trail behind, lacking systems to account for the return they’re getting from their investment in roads, highways, bridges and bus and rail systems. The other 18 states fall in the middle.

Robert Zahradnik is the Director of research for the Pew Center on the States and says there are a number of things states can do to improve.

”First the most obvious step is to improve the information and focus on results and make sure performance measures link to concrete goals, next states can use cost-benefit analysis and other economic tools to look at the economic impact of potential transportation spending and third states can bring performance measurement information clearly into the appropriations process,” Zahradnik said.

West Virginia falls within the 19 states that are falling behind. Zahradnik says there are reasons the state continues to have trouble tracking investments in its transportation systems.

“In the case of West Virginia where they’re specifically trailing behind in areas like mobility and environmental stewardship, that means they don’t have the essential tools, goals, performance measures and data to understand how their transportation investments are impacting congestion on the highways or how it’s impacting the environment in terms of greenhouse gases and other environmental concerns,” Zahradnik said.

Zahradnik says the fact that West Virginia is largely rural plays a role in why it is falling behind in access and mobility in transportation.

“West Virginia trails behind in mobility and has mixed results in the area of access and it actually doesn’t have performance measures and data to access it’s transportation progress in the area of mobility and in access it has some information, but it doesn’t have the full range of information,” Zahradnik said.

The Pew and Rockefeller study was conducted from September of 2010 to March of 2011.