While the need for new construction and maintenance work on the roads of New Mexico remain as great as ever, the means for paying for it all may soon decrease.
So says a new report just compiled by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee which, using figures from the New Mexico Department of Transportation, reports an “overall deterioration of the state’s roads, with the 2024 annual road condition survey noting the lowest ratings in recent history.”
The Department’s Statewide Transportation Improvement Program shows a current agenda of 709 projects with a dollar value of $4 billion.
An additional fifty projects worth more than $1.1 billion are categorized, says the report, as future projects “for which the Department has not yet assigned a specific funding source.”
One key to reducing expenses comes with the Department’s “ability to put projects out to bid on time and to complete projects on time and on budget,” continues the report, which is titled Top Area: Transportation.
But while the Department in recent years has improved its record of putting projects out on time, fewer projects were so defined in fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025 than in fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023.
For the near future, the Department “expects to let projects valued at $1.5 billion,” although there is currently a “$294 million in funding shortfall for these projects.”
At the same time, the overall condition of the state’s roads appears to be heading south, with the amount of roads in fair or better condition dropping last year from 86% to 70%. According to the Department’s road condition survey, “every category of road is in poorer condition than at any point in recent history.”
Despite the declining condition of many of the state’s roads, however, the report notes that pavement preservation work, as judged by the mile, has significantly improved, from 3,390 miles in fiscal year 2023 to nearly 3,900 miles for this fiscal year.
Overall, New Mexico lawmakers will be challenged in the years to come to find new revenue to meet the demand of state’s road work.
“With slowing general fund growth projected in future years,” the report notes, “the Legislature may not always have the flexibility to dedicate nonrecurring general fund resources to supplement transportation taxes and fees.”
September 26, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
