Highway Boondoggles

Since 2014, PIRG has documented 73 wasteful or unnecessary highway projects, originally slated to cost a total of at least $173 billion. Learn about projects in your area using the map and search tool below.

America spends more than a quarter-trillion dollars each year maintaining and expanding our system of highways. Roughly half of that money comes not from gas taxes or other charges paid by drivers, but rather from ordinary taxpayers. 

Federal, state and local governments face difficult choices in the years ahead. They can choose to focus transportation spending on real and critical needs with our transportation system, or squander an ever-increasing amount of taxpayer money on wasteful boondoggle projects that double down on the failed transportation strategies of the past.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law (a.k.a. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA) offers a cautionary tale. Rather than maximizing the amount of money spent on fixing our aging roads, making our streets safer, or providing options for Americans to travel without needing a car, many states spent lavishly on new or expanded highways – despite decades of evidence that highway expansion fails to address traffic congestion. 

As of June 2025, states committed $215 billion in highway and bridge formula funds from the IIJA, supporting over 100,000 new projects. While many of these projects include major necessary repairs and rehabilitation, many include expansion of highway capacity. Since 2022, over a fifth of funds provided through the IIJA were used to add lanes or widen existing roadways. 

Wasteful highway construction and expansion projects nationwide don’t solve congestion or improve safety – instead they harm the environment while contributing to lasting financial and health burdens for the public.

• Expanding a highway sets off a chain reaction of societal decisions that ultimately leads to the highway becoming congested again – often in only a short time. Since 1980, the U.S. has added well over 986,000 lane-miles of highway – paving more than 1,868 square miles, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island – and yet, traffic congestion in many American cities remains severe. 
• Highway expansion fuels additional driving that contributes to climate change. Transportation is America’s number one source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 28% of the nation’s total emissions in 2022.
• Air pollution from transportation causes tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year and makes us more vulnerable to a range of health problems, including asthma, impaired lung function, coronary heart disease and strokes.
• Highway expansion can cause irreparable harm to communities – forcing the relocation of homes and businesses, widening “dead zones” alongside highways, severing street connections for pedestrians and cars, reducing cities’ base of taxable property and overall community value, and stripping communities of their economic vitality.
• Building new roads diverts billions of taxpayer dollars from repairing existing ones. More than 150,000 miles of U.S. roadways were in “poor” condition in 2023. Currently, 35% of the nation’s bridges – or nearly 220,300 – need major repairs or replacement, and almost 6.7% of our bridges are considered “structurally deficient.” 

Roadway expansion projects will cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the years between construction and regular upkeep, saddling future generations with expensive maintenance needs.

Federal, state and local governments should stop or downsize unnecessary or low-priority highway projects. Specifically, policymakers should:

• Invest in transportation solutions that reduce our dependence on automobile travel. States should redirect their funds away from boondoggle projects and toward projects that expand transportation choices, prioritize repair and rehabilitation and reduce vehicle-miles traveled. Investments in public transportation, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, transport demand management and other measures reduce the pressure on congested highways, as well as delivering significant public health and environmental benefits. 
• Adopt fix-it-first policies that reorient transportation funding away from highway expansion and toward repair of existing roads and investment in other transportation options. 
• Use the latest transportation data and require full cost-benefit comparisons, including future maintenance needs, as well as socioeconomic benefits and impacts, to evaluate all proposed new and expanded highways. Public officials should ensure that all evaluations of proposed projects use up-to-date travel information and reflect a range of potential future trends for housing and transportation. 
• Review the purpose and need of key transportation funding programs and the conditions attached to funding awards made through these programs, for example adding conditions that must be met before considering building new roads, as opposed to simply providing a blank check for state and local transportation authorities.
• Invest in research and data collection to better track and react to ongoing shifts in how people travel.

Thanks to Frontier Group intern Elsie Aleck for her contribution to this research.