Since capital and bridge, maintenance, and administrative disbursements make up the majority of expenditures (74.7 percent in 2016), this report measures them individually and collectively. Total Disbursements include those three funding categories, plus three others: Highway Law Enforcement and Safety, Interest, and Bond Retirement. In total, the 50 states disbursed about $139.0 billion for state-owned roads in 2016, a 4.1 percent decrease from $145.0 billion in 2015, the last time this assessment was completed.
Total Disbursements Per State-Controlled Lane-Mile
24th Annual Highway Report
This year, we measure average state disbursements per lane-mile. In past years, we measured them in centerline-miles. The average 2016 per-mile disbursement is $71,117 per lane-mile (Table 10, Total Disbursements per State-Controlled Mile, 2016, Figure 5). We also calculated disbursements in centerline-miles to compare 2016 disbursements to previous years.
Centerline-mile disbursements decreased about 4.0 percent from $178,116 per mile in 2015 to $171,025 per mile in 2016. Over the last decade, highway spending has held steady. This small decrease maintains a generally steady spending trend over the last decade. Since 2007, these per-mile disbursements have increased by about 15 percent, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has increased by about 18 percent.*
In 2016, South Carolina, West Virginia, Missouri, South Dakota and North Carolina reported the lowest expenditures. New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut reported the highest per-mile expenditures. The states with the largest percentage shifts from 2015 to 2016 were Delaware (which increased per-mile expenditures by more than 103 percent) and Oregon, Hawaii, Louisiana, Arizona, New Hampshire and Texas (which each decreased per-mile expenditures by more than 30 percent). Some of the disbursements per state-controlled mile can vary widely from year to year—reflecting funding actions and project schedules.
*Massachusetts’ latest disbursement data is from 2010.