Infrastructure bill's roads focus is on rehabilitation, but more than 1/3 of states' capital spending on roads is for new ones

Washington Post chart

While Congress moves an infrastructure bill, many states are still focused on building new roads or expanding existing ones, The Washington Post reports.

"The Federal Highway Administration estimates a $435 billion backlog of rehabilitation needs, while an analysis of agency data by The Washington Post shows a fifth of the nation’s major roads, stretching almost 164,000 miles, were rated in poor condition in 2019. That figure has stayed mostly unchanged for a decade," Ian Duncan, Michael Laris and Kate Rabinowitz report. "Yet more than a third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog."

Washington Post chart

That "reflects a desire to connect growing communities and battle congestion at the local and state level in a nation where most people rely on cars," the Post reports. "That appetite for expansion is clashing with new transportation priorities in Washington that seek to bolster existing highways while promoting other modes of travel."

Transportation for America, which lobbies for more spending on road maintenance, "concluded in a 2019 report that many states were continuing to build new roads regardless of whether they could afford to maintain them," the Post reports. "The problem compounds over time, according to the group, which estimated that each lane of new road adds $24,000 in annual maintenance costs per mile."