Dear Neighbors:
When I attended synagogue yesterday, our recitation of the traditional prayer for peace was especially meaningful. We all hope that the war that began last week ends soon without further loss of life or harm to those in uniform or to innocent bystanders. In these times, Rhode Island state government matters appear less significant, but I will discuss with you in this week’s letter the quality of Rhode Island’s state roads and the need to conduct an efficiency study of our State’s road program.
In my December 14, 2025 Letter, I described my plan to file a bill in this year’s session to require an efficiency study of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT). As that letter notes, I based my decision at the time on these considerations: (1) the General Assembly previously required RIPTA to conduct an efficiency study, (2) RIDOT’s answers at an Oversight Committee hearing raised questions about its excessive use of contractors and (3) that a Reason Foundation study ranked the cost-efficiency of Rhode Island’s road program as 30th in the country.
On Thursday, Ted Nesi of WPRI-TV12 published the “Road Woes” Report that provides additional reasons for an efficiency study based on two sources of data which demonstrate that Rhode Island’s state roads have been the worst in the country for many years, as measured by the percentage of roads in poor condition. I encourage you to take a look at his ” Report, which is brief and easy to read.
The first source of data comes from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which records the percentage of State roads in poor condition. WPRI reviewed FHWA data from 2014, 2019 and 2024. In each year, Rhode Island had the highest percentage of roads in poor condition in the country. WPRI analyzed the categories of State roads, concluding that Rhode Island’s inventory of “urban principal arterials,” such as North Main Street in Providence and Route 2 in Warwick, are in especially bad condition, with almost 48% rated as “poor.”
The second source is a research paper by professors as Cal-Berkeley, Columbia and Yale Law School (you can read an excerpt by clicking here) that studies the role in-house engineers in state road resurfacing projects. Using their sample of data, the authors compared resurfacing cost per mile across the 50 states. As depicted in Figure D.7 on page 60, Rhode Island’s cost of $2 million per mile was at least twice as much as any other state. Using FHWA data, the authors compared road quality in Figure D.9 on page 62. Rhode Island had the poorest quality by a significant margin. I believe there is a need to study the efficiency of our $1 billion RIDOT annual budget when there are data indicating that our current program produces the nation’s poorest quality roads at what may be the nation’s highest cost.
The authors compared these results against each state’s level of in-house engineering capacity. The data supported the conclusion that states with greater in-house capacity produced better quality roads at lower cost. RIDOT’s status as a low-quality high-cost program is consistent with this conclusion, given the excessive reliance on consultants noted in Director Alviti’s testimony.
I filed the RIDOT efficiency audit bill in the Senate as Bill S-2124. Representative Stewart filed similar legislation as House Bill No. 7499. Her bill was heard by the House Committee on State Government and Elections this past Tuesday. The Senate bill has not yet been scheduled for a hearing.