Potholes Signal a Deeper Funding Crisis for Roads Across the Country
Why It Matters
For drivers in Wisconsin and across the nation, a pothole is more than an inconvenience. It is a visible indicator of a structural funding shortfall that transportation agencies say is growing faster than available revenue. Blown tires, bent rims, and suspension damage translate the maintenance backlog into direct costs for ordinary drivers already managing tight household budgets.
Research from The Pew Charitable Trusts estimates that state roadways face a combined maintenance and repair shortfall of $86.3 billion over the next decade — a gap that experts warn will widen if federal and state funding strategies do not change.
What Happened
Transportation officials and infrastructure researchers say deferred maintenance, rising construction costs, and stagnant revenue streams have created a deepening crisis for roads at every level of government. The problem is most visible in spring, when freeze-thaw cycles expose the accumulated damage of underfunded road networks.
Potholes form when water infiltrates pavement cracks, freezes and expands, then melts and leaves voids beneath the surface. Repeated vehicle traffic over those weakened areas breaks the pavement apart. Regions with frequent temperature swings — including much of the Midwest — face the problem most acutely.
“Years of that combination of traffic and climate action will cause you to have to do maintenance,” said Bill Buttlar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri. He noted that poor drainage compounds deterioration, and that older roads are especially vulnerable.
Experts warn that delaying repairs creates a costly cycle. Water continues to penetrate cracks and weaken road foundations, eventually turning manageable maintenance into expensive full reconstruction. “It turns out, it’s less expensive to do light maintenance more often,” Buttlar said.
By the Numbers
Federal transportation data shows that roughly 1 in 5 American roadways is currently rated in poor condition — down from a peak of approximately 91% of roads rated acceptable in 1999 to around 80% in recent years.
The five worst-performing states or jurisdictions — the District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Hawaii, California, and New Mexico — had between 34% and 89% of road miles rated in poor condition as of 2024. The best-performing states, including Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Wyoming, and Vermont, kept between 94% and 97% of roads in acceptable condition.
The federal gasoline tax, the primary driver of highway trust fund revenue, sits at 18.4 cents per gallon — a rate that has not changed since 1993. The growth of fuel-efficient and electric vehicles has further eroded gas tax collections relative to road use.
Cities have launched aggressive response efforts: Baltimore filled more than 32,000 potholes in a six-week stretch this spring and aims to fill an additional 25,000 before mid-July. New York City filled 100,000 potholes in the first 100 days under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Pothole complaints submitted through the city’s 311 system rose roughly 88% year over year in fiscal 2026.
Zoom Out
The revenue problem runs deeper than seasonal road conditions. Rocky Moretti, director of policy and research at TRIP, a nonprofit transportation research organization, described the current approach as systemic triage. “What states end up doing, partly because resources are limited, is they’re sort of triaging the system,” he said.
Richard Willis of the National Asphalt Pavement Association put the funding shortfall in historical terms: agencies “don’t have the budget to do proper maintenance practices,” he said, pointing to three decades of underinvestment relative to growing costs.
President Trump has proposed temporarily suspending the federal gas tax to ease fuel prices — a move that would reduce highway trust fund revenue further at a time when the infrastructure gap is already widening. His fiscal year 2027 budget blueprint also proposed deep cuts to domestic spending programs, raising questions about the federal government’s longer-term infrastructure commitment.
Some municipalities are turning to technology to stretch limited maintenance budgets. Chicago recently announced a partnership with tech company Samsara to deploy AI-powered sensors and cameras capable of detecting and logging road damage. San Jose, California, reported that a similar pilot program identified potholes with 97% accuracy. Massachusetts communities are testing pothole-detection software through a statewide pilot program. However, researchers caution that AI-based systems carry significant upfront costs and that complaint-driven reporting tools tend to underserve lower-income neighborhoods — a pattern documented in Houston, where communities with larger Black and Hispanic populations submitted fewer 311 complaints despite experiencing worse road conditions.
What’s Next
State and local governments are expected to continue exploring public-private technology partnerships and expanded federal grant applications as the maintenance backlog grows. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey pledged to have statewide potholes patched by the end of May, with road crews reporting more than 18,000 miles of repairs since January.
Whether Congress addresses the structural revenue problem — including whether to raise or index the federal gas tax — remains an open question as federal budget negotiations continue. In Wisconsin, as in most states, transportation officials will likely face another season of reactive repairs unless longer-term funding solutions move forward at the state or federal level. The state’s broader fiscal picture has already been shaped by ongoing budget disputes, including Governor Tony Evers’ recent vetoes of several Republican-backed fiscal measures.