The Reason Foundation has published their Annual Highway Report which ranks each state based on fourteen performance measures. Washington State comes in at 47^th, down one place from their 46^th place ranking the year before.  In the “maintenance disbursement” and “capital  and bridge disbursement” categories Washington was at the very bottom of the list in 50^th place. For “rural interstate pavement condition” Washington ranked 44^th, and for “urban arterial pavement condition” only slightly better at 43^rd.  

There was a time when WSDOT was known as one of the best in the country for highway planning, construction and maintenance. What happened?

About a dozen years ago emphasis shifted. Successive state transportation budgets funded completion of major projects, many of which had been planned for decades, and multi-modal programs were greatly expanded, but funding for highway preservation and maintenance fell behind. From 2009 to 2024 WSDOT didn’t even update the State Highway System Plan, which under state law is required to include:

(a) A system preservation element, which shall establish structural preservation objectives for the state highway system including bridges, identify current and future structural deficiencies based upon analysis of current conditions and projected future deterioration, and recommend program funding levels and specific actions necessary to preserve the structural integrity of the state highway system consistent with adopted objectives. Lowest life-cycle cost methodologies must be used in developing a pavement management system. This element shall serve as the basis for the preservation component of the six-year highway program and the two-year biennial budget request to the legislature;  

In 2022 WSDOT estimated unfunded preservation and maintenance required an additional $350 million per year. In 2023 the estimated shortfall was increased to $770 million per year. For the 2024 legislative session the cost estimate was raised again, to over a billion dollars per year for the next nineteen years!  That grim forecast led Sec. Roger Millar to describe the highway system as being “on a glide path to failure”.  

When highway preservation is put off the pavement continues to deteriorate. When this deterioration reaches the point where reconstruction of the roadway is required the cost per mile will typically be from three to seven times as much as preventive repaving done using a lowest life-cycle approach. Obviously, the highway system has not been maintained consistent with the “Lowest life-cycle cost” called for in state law. The map below, prepared by WSDOT in December of 2023, gives an idea of how much work has been deferred and how much more is urgently needed.

This sorry state of affairs has led to multi-directional finger pointing, with some blaming the legislature for not providing more funding, others fault the Governor for not submitting budgets that addressed the growing need, and a few others questioning why WSDOT’s cost estimates tripled in less than three years, and why appropriate plans hadn’t been prepared as required by state law.

Why didn’t the state put more resources into maintaining the highway system?    

Organizations that generally oppose highway expansion have claimed the legislature shortchanged maintenance to free up funds for expensive projects that increase highway capacity. Developing a state transportation budget does involve making difficult tradeoffs, but it is an over simplification to frame that as only a choice between new capacity and maintenance of existing facilities. As we can see from recent budgets, funding for various non-highway programs, including “active transportation”, rail, transit, and replacing culverts, has greatly expanded.  For example, in the 2024 transportation budget more than $120 million was spent on bike, pedestrian and transit elements of highway projects in the legislature’s “Connecting Washington” transportation package. That reduced resources available for WSDOT’s core highway responsibilities.

Rather than playing off these needs against one another the legislature has the option of using other revenue sources to support the transportation budget. However, in recent years when the legislature has enacted new revenue sources they have often been unwilling to use those funds for highway purposes. When the legislature passed the Climate Commitment Act it went so far as to specifically prohibit the use of carbon-emissions revenue for highway projects despite the fact motorists were paying in the form of higher gas prices. The bottom line is that the legislature has made a series of budget choices that have limited funding for highway preservation and maintenance even though total tax and fee revenue collected by the state increased.

Now the legislature is wrestling with how to slow deterioration of the state highway system while moving forward major highway projects which are already under construction, including the SR 520 connection to I-5, the SR 167/SR 509 Gateway projects, I-405 widening from Bellevue to Renton, and the North Spokane Freeway.

As the legislature negotiates a transportation budget in the coming weeks they would be well advised to start by acknowledging the state’s obligation to its citizens and to the Federal government to maintain critical highway assets, and to recognize that responsibility is a higher priority than feel-good programs that won’t improve the state’s dismal national ranking. The legislature should also take seriously the state laws that require maintaining the highway system at the lowest life-cycle cost. Continuing to ignore that requirement will add billions to the ultimate cost.