Congested and deficient roads cost Oklahoma drivers $4.9 billion a year because of increased vehicle operating costs, traffic crashes and delays, according to a report released by a transportation research group.
Twenty-eight percent of major locally and state-maintained roads in Oklahoma are in poor condition — showing signs of deterioration including rutting, cracks and potholes — and another 42 percent are in mediocre or fair condition, according to the report by The Road Information Project, a private nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C.
And in spite of the state increasing transportation spending over the past decade, 23 percent of Oklahoma’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to the report.
Oklahoma Department of Transportation spokeswoman Terri Angier said that since 2006 the state has dramatically reduced the number of deficient roads and bridges in the state but that more work needs to be done. She noted that the agency has spent about $5 billion in state and federal transportation dollars to improve transportation infrastructure over the past decade.
“Forty years of underfunding isn’t going to be reversed in 10 years,” Angier said. “We need to stay on course.”
In 2005, Oklahoma had the highest share of deficient bridges nationally with 30 percent of its bridges rated structurally deficient, according to the report. In 2015, 16 percent of Oklahoma’s bridges were rated as structurally deficient and in need of repair, the fifth highest nationally. The number of structurally deficient state-maintained bridges was cut from an all-time high of 1,168 bridges in 2004 to 339 at the end of 2015, the report stated.
If funding remains stable, Oklahoma is on track to have 1 percent or fewer of state-maintained bridges rated structurally deficient by the end of the decade, according to the report. But the agency is bracing for budget cuts due to a $1.3 billion hole in next year’s state budget largely due to a significant decline in global energy prices.
Oklahoma still has about $11 billion in backlogged bridge and roadway projects, according to TRIP, which said increased spending will ease traffic congestion and support long-term economic growth in the state.
A total of 3,419 people were killed in traffic crashes in Oklahoma between 2010 and 2014, an average of 684 fatalities per year, according to the report. Oklahoma’s overall traffic fatality rate is 11th highest in the nation.
TRIP estimates that deficient roads cost Oklahoma City-area drivers $2,242 per year and drivers in the Tulsa area $2,170.
Topics Personal Auto Oklahoma
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