The American Society of Civil Engineers unveiled its 2025 “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” on March 25 at a media event at in Washington, D.C., upgrading the condition of U.S. infrastructure to an overall ‘C’ grade in part due to work spurred by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA of 2021.
[Above photo by AASHTO]
Using an ‘A’ to ‘F’ school report card format, the Report Card provides a comprehensive assessment of current infrastructure conditions and needs across 18 categories, with broadband added as a new category to this year’s analysis, ASCE said.
The individual 2025 category grades ranged from a ‘B’ for ports to a ‘D’ grade for stormwater and transit. Though some categories improved and none earning a ‘D-’ grade for the first time since 1998, nine categories still received a grade in the ‘D’ range.
Eight category grades — dams, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks, roads, and transit — improved over the 2021 report. Two categories — energy and rail — received lower grades in the 2025 Report Card.
Yet ASCE noted that the overall ‘C’ grade issued for U.S. infrastructure overall in the 2025 Report Card is an improvement compared to the ‘C-‘ overall grade from the 2021 Report Card. It is also the highest grade given by ASCE since it began its analysis of U.S. infrastructure in four-year increments back in 1998.
However, though the 2025 Report Card indicates IIJA investments have started to pay off, ASCE projects a $3.7 trillion gap between current planned infrastructure investments and what must be done to put U.S. infrastructure in good working order — an increase from the $2.59 trillion gap reported four years ago.
“If we maintain investments, each American household can save $700 per year,” noted Darren Olson, vice president of the Water Resources Department at Christopher B. Burke Engineering and chair of ASCE’s 2025 Report Card, in a statement. “Better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs, resilience and connectivity.”
In a panel discussion held at the Report Card media event, Garrett Eucalitto – commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation – stressed that while the IIJA supported a wide range of transportation infrastructure improvements, that fiscal support also occurred at a time of rising inflation which increased project costs significantly.
“For us, it meant state DOTs [state departments of transportation] could not take project investment as far as we’d like,” noted Eucalitto, who also serves as the 2024-2025 president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Yet he emphasized that the IIJA represented a “huge investment” in infrastructure and that “we would be nowhere without it.”
That is especially true when it comes to securing a transportation workforce for the long term; a workforce capable of continuing the ongoing improvement in U.S. infrastructure into the future, Eucalitto pointed out.
He said that should be one of many key factors considered as Congress works on the next surface transportation reauthorization bill to replace the IIJA.
“The need for consistent, reliable, and sustained [infrastructure] funding is critical because we have a workforce that can move to different industrial sectors,” Eucalitto pointed out. “Welders on transportation projects, for example, can easily go work for submarine builders and if we lose them, they won’t come back to build bridges and highways. So the results of infrastructure funding is like a steam engine – it takes time to get going but, if we stop after a 5-year period, it takes a longer time to get back up to speed.”
ASCE pointed to three other key infrastructure trends within its 2025 Report Card:
- Aging infrastructure systems are increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters and extreme weather events, creating unexpected and often avoidable risks to public safety and disrupting economic activity, ultimately hampering U.S. global competitiveness.
- Recent federal and state investments have had a positive impact, but the full force of increased funding will take years to realize. Sustained investments are key to providing certainty and ensuring planning goes to development, as well as making larger infrastructure projects attainable.
- Unreliable or unavailable data on key performance indicators continues to impact certain infrastructure sectors. There are still infrastructure sectors where data is scarce or unreliable.
ASCE added that its Report Card analysis underscores the essential need for lawmakers to maintain existing levels of federal infrastructure investment while increasing participation from state and local governments and the private sector. Those two efforts in support of infrastructure improvements should reduce costs for American households and bolster U.S. economic growth, the group said.
“We have seen the difference investment can make in improving infrastructure,” noted Feniosky Peña-Mora, executive vice president of research at the Tec de Monterrey private university in Mexico City and the 2025 president of ASCE. “As the Report Card makes clear, there is still a great need for sustained investments,” he stressed. “Delaying upgrades to our nation’s roads, bridges, transit and utilities will cost families and businesses time and money, in addition to creating unsafe yet often avoidable situations.”
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