The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has published its 2025 August Distribution, listing more than $7.6 billion that will be obligated to state transportation agencies for a variety of capital improvement and enhancement projects.
While potentially providing significant funding support for projects in the upcoming year, the August Distribution poses programming challenges for state transportation agencies before the fiscal year ends.
The August Distribution is an annual reallocation from allocated programs that did not use their full share of funding during the year. All excess money is then delivered to progress transportation projects across the nation. The additional funding looks good on paper; however, as annual distributions continually grow larger, states must find a way to program between millions and billions of dollars with only approximately a month of lead up time.
State transportation agencies must fully program all carryover balances by Sept. 15, 2025, or risk losing it. Depriving these agencies of an adequate time window forces them to prioritize rush programming rather than strategic deployments.
With too much to use and not enough time to use them, excess funding can often go where it needs to be. Transportation departments, in the effort to make use of all funding made available to them, wind up funding low-priority projects as opposed to strategic plans and goals that matter.
The sudden windfall can also potentially impact how much states will receive in noncompetitive funding for the next year. The August Redistribution represents an advance on the upcoming year’s Highway Transportation Fund dollars, ultimately lowering funding allowances.
The states set to receive the highest obligated amounts include:
- Texas – $1 billion.
- California – $611 million.
- Pennsylvania – $409.7 million.
- New York – $345.5 million.
- Illinois – $279.2 million.
- Florida – $250 million.
- Georgia – $244 million.
A full list of all formula redistributions for this year can be found on FHWA’s website. Additional announcements regarding funding projects will be announced through respective transportation departments nationwide.
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