Infrastructure and Transport: what the public prioritizes and why it is hard to measure

Infrastructure and Transport, one of the ten provisional subjects in My Vote Forward, covers roads, transit, water systems, broadband and public facilities. In the United States these systems are vast, including about 4.2 million miles of public roads,⁠⁵ and more than 148,000 public water systems⁠⁸ and all but a small share of public road miles are owned by state and local governments rather than federal agencies.⁠⁹ Infrastructure is seldom named as the country’s most important problem, yet it sits beneath housing, health, work and safety, so a priority for it tells you people want working systems, not which systems, where, or who should pay.

In plain words

Infrastructure is the stuff that has to work for everything else to work: roads, bridges, buses and trains, the pipes that bring clean water and take wastewater away, and the cables that carry the internet.

People often notice it only when it breaks. A water main bursts. A bridge closes. A town has no fast internet. That makes infrastructure hard to rank: it may not feel urgent until it is.

This page explains what surveys show, why the subject is hard to measure, and the choices underneath it. Two companion pages explain who decides and what the evidence shows.

Defined terms

Infrastructure and Transport (as a My Vote Forward subject). Roads, transit, water systems, broadband and public facilities, as scoped in the demo’s provisional list. See Subjects.

Capital spending. Money spent to build, replace or substantially improve an asset.

Operations and maintenance (O&M). Money spent to run and keep up an existing asset.

Deferred maintenance. Maintenance postponed to a later year, which often raises the eventual cost.

User fee. A charge paid by the people who use a service, such as a fuel tax, a toll, a transit fare or a water bill.

Mode. A form of transport, such as driving, transit, walking, cycling, rail or air.

Priority versus proposal. A priority says the subject deserves attention. A proposal, such as a hypothetical bond to replace a city’s lead water lines, has an authority, a cost and a funding source. See Proposals.

Evidence: what the public says about infrastructure and transport

Infrastructure and Transport barely appears in open-ended national measures of concern. In Gallup’s September 1 to 17, 2026 survey of about 1,000 adults, the “most important problem” question recorded no mentions of infrastructure, and in no month from March to September 2026 did infrastructure reach 1%.⁠¹ Pew Research Center’s January 2024 report on policy priorities for the president and Congress led with the economy, named by 73% as a top priority, and the report’s discussion did not single out infrastructure.⁠²

This invisibility is itself a finding about measurement. Open-ended questions capture what is on people’s minds, and infrastructure tends to be on people’s minds only after a failure or during a large construction project. A fixed list that includes infrastructure may produce a very different answer, which is one reason the framework publishes its list and method with every result. See Subjects for a fuller discussion of open and closed questions.

Why infrastructure and transport is hard to measure as a priority

Infrastructure and Transport is hard to measure as a priority for several reasons.

It is noticed when it fails. A road in good repair is invisible. Rankings taken after a water crisis, a bridge failure or a long outage will differ from rankings taken in calm periods.

It bundles very different systems. Roads, transit, water, broadband and public buildings have different owners, funding sources and users. A rural resident who wants broadband and an urban resident who wants better buses are both inside one subject.

Benefits are spread and delayed. A water main replaced this year prevents breaks a decade from now. People may rank a subject lower when its benefits are slow and hard to see.

It overlaps every other subject. Transit affects access to jobs (Economy and Work); roads and transit shape where housing can be built (Housing and Communities); school buildings belong partly to Education; clean water is a matter of Health and Care. Participants must decide where to put a concern that belongs in two places.

Participants are self-selected. People without good internet access are less likely to take part in an online exercise, so broadband needs may be underrepresented among the very people who lack it. See Measurement.

The real tradeoffs in infrastructure and transport

Infrastructure involves tradeoffs that no ranking resolves.

Maintenance versus expansion. New projects are visible and attract ribbon cuttings; maintenance is not. Every dollar spent widening a highway or building a new line is a dollar not spent fixing existing roads, pipes or stations. Advocates on both sides argue about which deserves more.

Who pays: users or taxpayers. The federal gasoline tax is 18.3 cents per gallon, plus 0.1 cent for the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, for 18.4 cents.⁠³ It is set in cents per gallon, not as a percentage of price, so its real value falls with inflation unless Congress raises it, and it collects less as vehicles become more efficient or electric. The Urban Institute reports that in 2021, state and local motor fuel taxes raised about $53 billion, or about 26% of the $206 billion state and local governments spent on highways and roads.⁠⁴ The rest came from federal transfers, general taxes, tolls and borrowing. Shifting from user fees toward general taxes spreads costs widely; shifting toward tolls and fees asks users to pay more directly.

Which modes. Spending on roads, transit, rail, walking and cycling serves different people. Drivers, transit riders and people who cannot drive (because of age, disability or cost) have different needs, and places differ greatly in which modes are practical.

Which places. Rural areas have many miles of road and few users per mile; cities have dense networks and many users. The Federal Highway Administration counts 2,944,124 miles of rural public roads and 1,255,085 miles of urban public roads in 2023.⁠⁵ Allocating money by miles, by users or by need gives different answers.

Speed and cost versus review and voice. Environmental review, public hearings and local consent protect communities and the environment, and can also add time and cost. The Transit Costs Project, a research effort that compared rail construction across countries, identified governance factors such as political micromanagement and early commitment to projects before designs were mature among the causes of high U.S. costs.⁠⁶ Others argue that review processes prevent harms, such as highways routed through neighborhoods, that were common in earlier decades.

Strongest arguments across perspectives

The strongest arguments about infrastructure do not fall neatly on one side.

Invest more. Advocates of higher spending argue that the country has underinvested for decades. The American Society of Civil Engineers, an engineering professional society, gave U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of C in its 2025 report card, with roads at D+ and transit at D, and estimated a $3.6 trillion investment gap over ten years.⁠⁷ Critics note that ASCE’s members design and build infrastructure, that its grades are judgments, and that “gap” estimates depend on what one assumes should be built.

Spend better, not just more. Cost-focused critics argue that U.S. projects cost far more than comparable projects elsewhere. The Transit Costs Project, drawing on a database of more than 900 projects in 59 countries, found the United States the sixth most expensive country for rapid rail construction, and estimated that Phase 1 of New York’s Second Avenue Subway cost roughly 8 to 12 times its low-cost baseline drawn from Italy, Istanbul and Sweden.⁠⁶ On this view, more money without reform buys less than it should.

Fix it first. A maintenance-first view, held across the spectrum, argues that governments should prioritize keeping existing assets in good repair before adding new capacity, because new assets add future maintenance obligations.

User pays. Some argue that those who use infrastructure should pay for it through fuel taxes, road charges, tolls, fares and water rates, which encourages efficient use and makes costs visible. Critics answer that user fees can be regressive and that some infrastructure has broad public benefits.

Local control and private provision. Some argue that local governments and private providers can deliver infrastructure more efficiently than federal programs, and that federal conditions add cost. Others argue that federal funding is necessary for poorer places and for national networks.

Equity and access. Others argue that infrastructure decisions have historically underserved some communities, for example through highways built across neighborhoods or rural areas left without broadband, and that spending should be directed toward those gaps. Critics worry that equity criteria can become political rather than technical.

Competing interpretations

Infrastructure priorities can be read in at least three ways.

A reliability reading holds that people want systems that simply work: no boil-water notices, no closed bridges, no dropped connections.

A mobility and access reading holds that people want to reach jobs, schools and services more easily, which leads to arguments about which modes and places to serve.

A cost reading holds that people want infrastructure that does not cost too much, whether through taxes, tolls, fares or water bills, which leads to arguments about efficiency and who pays.

My Vote Forward does not choose among these readings. A subject ranking cannot distinguish them, which is why opinions on specific proposals are asked separately. See Opinions.

Application to this framework

• Priority. A participant can rank Infrastructure and Transport against the other nine subjects. The result shows attention, not a preferred project. See Priorities.
• Opinion. Views on a specific proposal, such as a hypothetical transit sales tax or water rate increase, are a separate step with exact wording. See Opinions.
• Vote. Many infrastructure decisions, such as bonds and local tax measures, reach official ballots. Those votes happen through the official election, not through My Vote Forward. See Private voting.
• Authority. Because infrastructure is owned by many separate bodies, the framework points each concern to the body that can act. See Who decides.
• Tradeoffs. Ranking infrastructure high does not decide maintenance versus expansion, or which mode gets funded. See Tradeoffs.

Hypothetical example: after a water main break, participants in a city rank Infrastructure and Transport first. The published result says that, with the date, denominator and method. It does not say they support a particular rate increase, and it notes that the ranking was taken shortly after a failure.

Unresolved questions

• Should broadband, water and transport be separate subjects, given how different their owners and funding are?
• How should rankings taken right after an infrastructure failure be reported relative to rankings in calmer periods?
• How can a framework fairly include people who lack the infrastructure (such as broadband) needed to participate?
• How should priorities about maintenance, which has diffuse and delayed benefits, be weighed against priorities about visible new projects?