Most infrastructure articles open by telling you the roads are crumbling. Minnesota's own data won't support that, so I won't write it. MnDOT currently beats every one of its pavement and bridge condition targets. If your commute feels rougher than it did, that is real, but it is mostly happening on county and city roads rather than state highways.
The story is in the projections, and it is worse than a complaint about potholes.
The cliff
From MnDOT's own 2025 performance report: the share of non-Interstate state highway pavement rated poor goes from 1.4 percent in 2024 to 14.9 percent in 2035 — roughly a tenfold increase, blowing past the state's own 8 percent target. Bridges follow the same shape: the poor share on the National Highway System dips to 4.7 percent by 2029, then climbs to 10.1 percent by 2035.
One detail from that dataset stayed with me. The Blatnik Bridge — the Duluth-Superior high bridge — was removed from the projection data. Not because it improved. Because it is being replaced, and a bridge in that condition distorts the average.
The engineers' scorecard tells the same story from outside. The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2026 Minnesota report card grades our roads D+, bridges C+, transit C. Minnesota has 850 bridges in poor condition — genuinely better than 874 in 2022 — but the number sliding from good into fair rose from 6,810 to 7,122. That middle category is where the next decade's poor bridges are currently sitting.
This is what deferred maintenance looks like before it looks like anything. The pavement is fine until it isn't, and the year it isn't, it costs several times what it would have cost to keep.
The gap, and what the 2023 taxes actually raised
MnDOT's long-range plan puts it plainly: about $36.7 billion in expected revenue against $52–57 billion in needs through 2042 — a gap of $15 to $20 billion.
The 2023 Legislature moved to close part of it. Here is what those changes actually did, with two corrections to what most people believe:
The gas tax is now indexed to construction-cost inflation. The first indexed step took effect January 1, 2025 — not 2024 — moving the rate from 28.5 cents to 31.8 cents, then to 32.6 cents in 2026 and 32.8 cents in 2027. And there's a catch worth understanding: indexing is capped at 3 percent a year, while MnDOT's own planning document states that construction cost inflation "has exceeded 4 percent over the long run." A cap set below the thing you're indexing to isn't indexing. It's a slower loss.
The 50-cent retail delivery fee raised $19,940,000 in fiscal 2025 — real money, and also six one-hundredths of one percent of all Minnesota tax collections. Against a $15–20 billion gap, it is a rounding error that generated a large share of the political heat.
The EV surcharge was created in 2017 at $75, not in 2023; a 2025 law raised it to a $150 floor and added a plug-in hybrid surcharge.
The politics are not what you think
I expected to find a party-line fight over the delivery fee. That is not what the bill record shows.
Yes, the repeal bills came from Republicans — Joy, Rasmusson, Roach, and Allen, the last with 35 co-authors. But Sen. Dibble, a DFLer, introduced a bill to expand the fee by removing its $100 threshold. And the bills that actually narrowed it were authored by DFL senators Frentz and Johnson Stewart, with another modification co-authored across party lines by Sen. Rest with Republicans Housley and Kreun.
The narrowing side quietly won: a 2025 law carved out fuel products and road-construction materials. No press conference, no yard signs — three factions inside both parties negotiated a fee into a different shape while the public argument stayed frozen.
My favorite exchange in the record captures the whole problem. MnDOT's commissioner wrote the House Transportation Committee in March 2026 putting the $15–20 billion gap on the record against a bill to roll back registration taxes. The committee's DFL co-chair voted the rollback down while conceding on the record that "tab fees are way too high." Everybody knows both things are true. Nobody has a plan that survives saying so.
The transit line everyone points at
If you want to know why voters are skeptical of transportation spending, the Southwest light rail extension is the whole argument in one project.
The Legislative Auditor's April 2025 performance audit lays it out: a budget of $1.25 billion in 2011 became $2.86 billion by January 2024. The opening slipped from 2018 to 2027. The civil construction contract went from $799.5 million to $1.065 billion, plus a settlement of up to $285 million.
The audit's specific findings are the part that should have gotten more attention. Auditors found the Metropolitan Council signed contaminated-soil manifests blank, in bulk — the documents certifying where hazardous material went — and overpaid the contractor $329,517. The Council disputes the overpayment finding on the record.
I'd make the same argument here I've made about every program in this series: the way you protect public investment is to audit it in public, in time to matter. A capital program that doubles in cost while its own paperwork is being signed blank is not an argument against transit. It's an argument for the kind of oversight that makes transit defensible.
The number nobody expected
The best news in this entire article: Minnesota traffic deaths fell from 476 in 2024 to 363 in 2025 — preliminary, but a 23.7 percent one-year drop, and the lowest figure in the modern record, below even 2019's 364.
Three honest qualifications, because a number that good deserves scrutiny rather than a victory lap. 2026 is running ahead of 2025 — 255 deaths as of September 1, against 236 at the same point last year. Serious injuries moved the opposite direction, from 1,526 in 2019 to 2,062 in 2024. And no source establishes what caused the 2025 drop; Minnesota's hands-free law took effect in 2019, so anyone crediting a recent policy for it is guessing.
Still: 113 more Minnesotans came home in 2025 than in 2024. Whatever combination of enforcement, engineering, and luck produced that, it is worth finding out and repeating.
What we can do
Fund the maintenance before the cliff, not after. I looked for the familiar claim that a dollar of preservation saves six to ten in reconstruction and could not verify it in any federal source — so I won't use it. What is documented: Ohio's DOT reported roughly $300 million in cost reductions from its preservation program, and MnDOT's own projections show culverts going from 17 to 36 percent poor and signals from 9 to over 30 percent past useful life by 2042. The case for preservation doesn't need an unsourced slogan; the state's own decay curves make it.
Fix the index or admit it isn't one. A 3 percent cap against 4-plus percent inflation guarantees the gap grows. Say so out loud and let voters decide, rather than letting the shortfall accumulate quietly.
Publish the audits where drivers can find them. The light-rail findings existed for over a year before most Minnesotans heard about them.
And have the honest conversation. There are only three ways to close a $15–20 billion gap: raise revenue, cut the program, or let the roads go. Right now Minnesota is choosing the third by not choosing — which is how a state ends up with a 1.4 percent problem in 2024 and a 14.9 percent problem in 2035.
The pavement doesn't care who wins the argument. It just keeps aging on schedule.
Sources
MnDOT, 2025 Transportation System Performance Report — current pavement and bridge condition against targets, and the 2035 projections for non-NHS state highways (1.4% to 14.9% poor) and NHS bridges (4.7% in 2029 to 10.1% in 2035), including the exclusion of the Blatnik Bridge from projection data; MnDOT's Minnesota State Highway Investment Plan (MnSHIP, 2023–2042) for the $36.7 billion revenue estimate against $52–57 billion in needs, the statement that construction cost inflation has exceeded 4 percent over the long run, and the 2042 deterioration projections for culverts and signals. American Society of Civil Engineers, 2026 Minnesota Infrastructure Report Card — grades and bridge counts, including the increase in bridges rated fair. Gas tax rates and indexing schedule (28.5¢ through Dec. 31, 2024; 31.8¢ effective Jan. 1, 2025; 32.6¢ in 2026; 32.8¢ in 2027; the 3 percent annual cap beginning with the Aug. 1, 2025 calculation) and the electric-vehicle surcharge history (created 2017 at $75; raised to a $150 floor with a plug-in hybrid surcharge by 2025 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 8). Minnesota Department of Revenue, Tax Handbook Supplement (Jan. 2026) — retail delivery fee collections of $19,940,000 in FY2025, 0.06 percent of state tax collections, with $0 in FY2023 and FY2024; the original revenue projection was not obtained and no projected-versus-actual comparison is made here. Bill authorship and outcomes for 2025–26 delivery-fee legislation from the Office of the Revisor; the fuel-products and road-construction-materials exemptions enacted in 2025 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 8. MnDOT Commissioner Nancy Daubenberger's March 2026 letter to the House Transportation Committee, and the committee co-chair's remarks on registration taxes. Office of the Legislative Auditor, Financial Audit Division performance audit of the Southwest Light Rail Transit project (April 2025, report fad2503) — budget growth from $1.25 billion (2011) to $2.86 billion (Jan. 2024), the schedule change from 2018 to 2027, contract growth and settlement, the blank-signed contaminated soil manifests, and the $329,517 overpayment finding, which the Metropolitan Council disputes. Minnesota Department of Public Safety traffic fatality counts (2019, 2021, 2024, 2025 preliminary, and 2026 year-to-date as of Sept. 1) and serious injury counts; Minnesota's hands-free law took effect Aug. 1, 2019. Ohio Department of Transportation preservation program savings as published by FHWA.
The frequently cited claim that one dollar of pavement preservation saves six to ten dollars in reconstruction could not be verified in FHWA sources and is not used. MnDOT and ASCE differ on congestion direction, and MnDOT and DPS differ slightly on 2023 fatality counts; where they conflict, this article uses the agency that collects the underlying data and says which. TRIP's Minnesota cost-per-driver report and Metro Transit ridership baselines were not obtained. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.