The 26th Annual Highway Report is out, and it isn’t kind to New Jersey, ranking the Garden State’s highways at the very bottom of the barrel.

The Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-controlled highways in 13 categories, including urban and rural pavement condition, deficient bridges, traffic fatalities, spending per mile, and administrative costs per mile of highway.

New Jersey was ranked the worst in the nation overall, and was in the bottom ten nationally in 8 of the report’s 13 metrics. The report states that while some higher costs are understandable, New Jersey spends $1,136,255 per mile of state-controlled road, which is $762,700 more than New York spends per mile and $929,331 more than California spends per mile.

The Garden States ranked 50th in disbursements per mile; 50th in capital and bridge disbursements per mile; 50th in maintenance disbursements per mile; 50th in urbanized area congestion; 49th in administrative disbursements per mile; 47th in urban interstate pavement condition; 47th in rural arterial pavement condition; 45th in urban arterial pavement condition; 30th in structurally deficient bridges; 18th in urban fatality rate; 9th in rural fatality rate; 4th in overall fatality rate; and 1st in rural interstate pavement condition.

The report also found that New Jersey is one of just five states in which commuters spend more than 50 hours annually stuck in peak-hour traffic congestion. New York, Illinois, Delaware, and Michigan are the four others.

The study also found that other states with high density populations have good highway systems including Virginia (#2 overall), Missouri (#3), North Carolina (#5), Georgia (#14) and Texas (#16) so excuses about more people traveling New Jersey roads don’t hold water. Additionally, the study found that while the US highway system is becoming incrementally better over time, the nation’s highway systems problems are concentrated in the bottom ten states, and despite spending more and more money, these worst-performing state – including New Jersey – are not improving.

For instance, three state – New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts – have each spent more than $250,000 per lane-mile of highway and their highway systems are still abysmal. In contrast, five states – Missouri, South Carolina, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota – spent less than $30,000 per mile of highway, yet their roads are in far better shape.

Sitting in the highway cellar along with New Jersey are Rhode Island, Alaska, Hawaii, and New York, all of whom got abysmal marks for the state of their highway systems.

The best state