Baltimore repaved just 26 miles of the roughly 2,000 miles of city streets that it’s responsible for last year. At that rate, it would take until the next century to repave them all.

But it did fewer the year before that. And even fewer the year before that.

The days of a smooth drive around Charm City seem far away. But as this year’s paving season begins, city transportation officials have bigger plans, aiming to cover 111 miles of streets before the weather gets too cold to lay asphalt, thanks to an increase in state dollars negotiated years ago.

“We have lofty, robust but confident goals,” said Veronica McBeth, director of the city’s transportation department, after a community town hall earlier this month.

Road repaving is one of several agency deficiencies that McBeth has inherited and is trying to right in her first year on the job.

The department’s “orange cone list” — a spreadsheet detailing which roadways should get some TLC — was just approved, about two months earlier than last year’s list, she added. Despite a request, the department has not shared the list with The Baltimore Banner.

Just about everyone complains about the condition of Baltimore’s roads. The potholes? Plentiful. The asphalt? Quite possibly at-fault for car suspension problems. Maryland Transit Administration buses need reinforced frames just to survive the daily wear and tear.

This year’s planned paving blitz would get the transportation department back in line with the amount of asphalt Baltimore typically laid before the pandemic. But Maryland’s larger budget woes could mean fewer miles paved statewide in the years ahead.

The State Highway Administration is responsible for maintaining most roads throughout the state — except in Baltimore, which relies mostly on state “highway user revenues.” It pays not just for road resurfacing, but bridge rehabilitation, fixing traffic signals and a slew of other things.

Maryland’s counties and some municipalities also get highway user revenues to maintain local roads, but it’s chump change compared to what Baltimore gets, where it’s a main source of funding for everything the transportation department does.

In 2008, the state legislature changed the funding formula to save money, and Baltimore infrastructure suffered for it. So city leaders lobbied for it to change again. The result is a highmark in funding — and a nicely padded resurfacing budget — through June 2027.

But city leaders warn that without more action in Annapolis in coming years, they’ll be paving their way up to fiscal cliff. City budget documents predict a roughly 74% drop in resurfacing funds between fiscal years 2027 and 2028.

“It’s a flexible bucket of funding that we absolutely need to keep going,” City Councilwoman Odette Ramos said. “We encourage the General Assembly to keep it going — we’ll all be there in Annapolis to advocate for that.”

The money is used as a match to draw additional state or federal funds for larger projects, Ramos said. And it’s also critical for safety initiatives, like paying for crossing guards outside schools, she added.

Mayor Brandon Scott‘s administration plans to advocate for additional state action, calling highway user revenues a “top concern,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“This work ensures the City is able to maintain our efforts to replace our aging infrastructure to improve the quality of life for our residents and the efficiency of our transportation grid,” the statement reads.

Ailing asphalt

Nearly half of Maryland’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, according to a March report from TRIP, a national transportation research organization, and the percentage is even higher in Baltimore. Deteriorating roads cost the average Marylander $843 a year in additional vehicle expenses, the report states.

Mix in time lost sitting in congestion and costs associated with crashes, the average Baltimorean is shelling out more than $2,800 beyond just car payments, gas and insurance, said Rocky Moretti, TRIP’s director of policy and research, during a recent presentation.

The 111 miles of street that Baltimore plans to tackle this year represent just 5.5% of the roads it’s responsible for. Statewide in 2023, the most recent year with available data, the state resurfaced about 900 miles of road, or about 2.5% of the roads it’s responsible for.

That’s a lot of asphalt. And unfortunately, it’s getting more expensive.

The 2021 bipartisan federal infrastructure bill authorized a huge amount of highway spending that has flowed down to the states. But a lot of those gains were washed out by cost increases of as much as 50% in some markets, said Nile Elam, vice president for government affairs at the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

Asphalt supply chains vary by region — sourcing rock from riverbeds and quarries and binder from oil companies — meaning prices vary quite a bit geographically, said J. Richard Willis, who heads engineering, research and technology at the pavement group. Then the pandemic threw those supply chains for a loop, Elam and Willis said, and labor prices also shot up as companies struggle to retain employees for what can be grueling, seasonal work.

Add the threat of tariffs, Willis said, and the future becomes murkier.

Plus, the construction labor force relies on immigrant workers facing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Beyond roads, the state faces a monumentally expensive backlog of rehabilitation work without a future-proofed way of paying for it all. The gas tax historically fueled a lot, but more electric vehicles and increasingly fuel-efficient cars mean less in the transportation coffers.

Meanwhile, some roads just need a new layer of asphalt; but others must be milled down an inch or so and repaved. Depending on road conditions, how traveled the road is, and the kinds of traffic (like if it’s a truck route with more wear and tear), more serious intervention could be necessary.

In Baltimore, the city’s consent decree over ADA accessibility, could require new concrete work at sidewalks and intersections.

So though 111 miles of Baltimore roads are getting a refresh, the future for others still looks bumpy.

“When you delay preservation,” Moretti said, “the costs are far higher in the future.”