NJ Has Some Of The Nation’s Least Reliable Infrastructure, New Study Finds

Everyday life in New Jersey can be quietly disrupted by infrastructure issues — ranging from crumbling roadways to extended power blackouts — often going unnoticed until vital systems fail.

New Jersey ranks 16th for infrastructure pressure in a new analysis by the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia comparing all 50 states across seven measures of infrastructure conditions, reliability and investment.

The study gave the greatest weight to roads in poor condition (25 percent), bridges in poor condition (20 percent) and the duration of power outages (20 percent). Broadband availability accounted for 15 percent of each state’s score, followed by the average number of drinking water violations per community (10 percent), highway maintenance spending per person (5 percent) and on-time flight performance (5 percent).

The analysis used federal data from 2024 through 2026, including figures from the Federal Highway Administration, Energy Information Administration, Federal Communications Commission and Environmental Protection Agency. Importantly, the water violations were calculated by dividing the total number of reported health-based violations in each state by the number of community water systems operating there. It does not mean every water system had a violation.

Researchers combined the measures into a score of 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater infrastructure problems.

New Jersey's score was 35.47, based on:

• Percent of poor roads: 21 percent
• Percent of poor bridges: 5.93 percent
• Outages (hours): 2.58 hours
• Percent of broadband availability: 100 percent
• Average number of health-based water violations per community water system: 1.5
• Percent of flights not on time: 22.8 percent

West Virginia ranked first for overall infrastructure pressure, followed by Rhode Island, Alaska, California and Massachusetts.

At the opposite end, Delaware, Utah, North Dakota, Florida and Georgia recorded the lowest overall infrastructure pressure scores.