Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956 to 2017
Report
In 2017, spending by federal, state, and local governments for transportation and water infrastructure totaled $441 billion. This slide deck updates information that CBO released in 2015.
The Congressional Budget Office has regularly published a report that documents trends in public spending for infrastructure. Here, CBO has updated the exhibits featured in that report through 2017.
There are six types of transportation and water infrastructure that are paid for largely by the public sector:
Highways,
Mass transit and rail,
Aviation,
Water transportation,
Water resources, and
Water utilities.
Federal, state, and local governments spent $441 billion on those types of infrastructure in 2017. That amount equaled about 2.3 percent of gross domestic product. The largest component of that total, $177 billion, went to highways, followed by water utilities and mass transit and rail.
