States are finally starting to allocate their transportation funding toward road repairs, but it might be too little, too late to see much improvement anytime soon. Our newest edition of Repair Priorities found that while states have started to shift more spending toward maintenance over expansion in recent decades, rising costs and continuing investment in new infrastructure mean these dollars don’t necessarily translate into better conditions on the ground.
Repair Priorities 2026 found that even though states now spend an average of 39 percent of their funding on road repair and 25 percent on expansion, according to data from 2018 to 2024, there’s only been a three percentage point decrease in the share of federal-aid-eligible roads rated in poor condition across the country. These spending priority changes aren’t seen in every state, and even those that finally made the shift continue to face a growing maintenance backlog that spending can’t solve on its own.
West Virginia: Investing in expansion to the point of insolvency
The consequences of years prioritizing expansion over maintenance aren’t just crumbling infrastructure, but can even include fiscal ruin. That’s at least the case in West Virginia, where former Gov. and current Sen. Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity initiative was meant to boost the economy through new infrastructure. Not only did prioritizing expansion over maintenance allow more of the state’s roads to fall into disrepair, but it also left little funding to address future upkeep or changing road conditions, leaving its Department of Transportation in a state of insolvency.
Roads to Prosperity, funded through tax revenue and general obligation bonds, spent the majority of its funding—a whopping 97 percent—in the first seven years, even though its bonds will take 30 years for the state to repay. That means the state now owes about $120 million each year in interest payments on those bonds, eating up funds that should go toward maintaining the roads that will fall into disrepair, in one of the largest state-owned highway systems in the country.
(The state’s misspending was so severe that current Gov. Patrick Morrisey said that the federal government stepped in, warning that federal funds would be cut if the state didn’t change how it managed its highway system.)
Last year, Gov. Morrisey completely overhauled spending and culture within the state’s Department of Transportation, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing immediate needs and maintaining existing infrastructure over new investments. But West Virginia is still set to face significant challenges in the coming years. The state already ranks among the 10 worst for road conditions. Along with the 26 percent of its roads already in poor condition, Repair Priorities 2026 found that nearly 47 percent of its roads are in fair condition, meaning they’re at risk of falling into the former.
Our report also found that West Virginia has one of the highest rates of bridges in poor condition across the country, but still spent more on bridge expansion than maintenance in 2024.
Michigan: Spending that can’t overcome its maintenance backlog
Even states that shifted their spending priorities earlier on are struggling to see better outcomes. Repair Priorities 2026 highlighted Michigan as an example of a state with “good spending” but “poor outcomes.” Even though it was the state with the seventh highest spending on road maintenance in 2024—putting 56 percent of its average annual spending toward road maintenance—the state’s road conditions still rank as some of the worst across the country, improving by only 7 percent since 2018.
Just spending more money isn’t enough to deliver better outcomes. Spending must be thoughtfully directed toward preventative maintenance, which stops more roads from falling into poor conditions, requiring more expensive repairs, and adding to maintenance backlogs. Instead of this approach, Michigan has spent its funds on reconstructing its roads—a more intensive, expensive, and delayed repair strategy—leaving little funding left over to prevent more roads from falling into states of disrepair and later requiring similar treatment.
Michigan, which shifted its spending priorities a few years ahead of West Virginia, demonstrates that states that didn’t change their spending priorities fast enough now find themselves stuck with maintenance backlogs that are nearly impossible to spend their way out of. And the state’s approach to transportation spending doesn’t seem set to change anytime soon, since the current structure of state law still fails to consider how the state should spend its transportation funding.
Simply put, decades of poor prioritization continue to outweigh progress. It would’ve cost less to stabilize the system earlier, and now that construction and labor costs have increased and road conditions have worsened, the price of inaction is even higher. Michigan is one of 13 states confronting the challenges of repairing its roads once they have fallen into poor condition, even while increasing their spending on maintenance.
States can’t just start spending on repairs—we need more states to allocate bigger, more concentrated funding to preventative maintenance as soon as possible. Congress can make states do just that by requiring them to dedicate funding to repairing and maintaining existing systems before building anything new, and to demonstrate they can afford to operate and maintain new infrastructure alongside what they already have.
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