California Construction News staff writer
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has released its 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which evaluates the state of U.S. infrastructure and assigns an overall grade of ‘C.’
This marks an improvement over the ‘C-’ grade given in 2021, reflecting progress sparked by recent legislation. However, the report emphasizes that more work and investment are required to address the challenges stemming from decades of underinvestment and to modernize critical infrastructure such as transportation networks, water systems, the electric grid, and broadband services to meet both current and future needs.
The 2025 grade is the highest ASCE has awarded since the report began in 1998. While the infrastructure improvements funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed in 2021 are beginning to show positive effects, ASCE estimates a $3.7 trillion gap between current infrastructure investments and what is needed to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to standard—an increase from the $2.59 trillion gap identified four years ago.
The report underscores the urgent need for lawmakers to sustain federal investment in infrastructure, as well as encourage greater involvement from state and local governments and the private sector. These efforts are crucial to reducing costs for American households and fostering economic growth.
Darren Olson, Chair of the 2025 Report Card, stated, “Every American household or business immediately feels the impact of just one inefficiency or failure in our built environment. However, if we maintain investments, each American household can save $700 per year. Better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs, resilience, and connectivity.”
ASCE’s Report Card uses an ‘A’ to ‘F’ grading scale to assess the condition of 18 infrastructure categories, with broadband added as a new category this year. The individual grades in 2025 ranged from a ‘B’ for ports to a ‘D’ for stormwater and transit systems.
While no category received a ‘D-’ for the first time since 1998, nine categories were still graded in the ‘D’ range. However, eight categories—such as dams, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks, roads, and transit—showed improvement since the 2021 report.
In contrast, the grades for energy and rail infrastructure declined.
The 2025 Report Card found three overarching trends impacting infrastructure:
- Aging infrastructure systems are increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters and extreme weather events, creating unexpected and often avoidable risks to public safety and disrupting economic activity, ultimately hampering U.S. global competitiveness.
- Recent federal and state investments have had a positive impact, but the full force of increased funding will take years to realize. Sustained investments are key to providing certainty and ensuring planning goes to development, as well as making larger infrastructure projects attainable.
- Unreliable or unavailable data on key performance indicators continues to impact certain infrastructure sectors. There are still infrastructure sectors where data is scarce or unreliable.
“We have seen the difference investment can make in improving infrastructure,” said Feniosky Peña-Mora, 2025 ASCE President. “After releasing this report eight times, this is the first time for a ‘C’ grade, the highest ever awarded. While this showcases that investment leads to direct results, the job is not yet done. As the Report Card makes clear, there is still a great need for sustained investments. Delaying upgrades to our nation’s roads, bridges, transit and utilities will cost families and businesses time and money, in addition to creating unsafe yet often avoidable situations.”
To view the full Report Card, visit InfrastructureReportCard.org
