Baltimore Warns Further Cuts Could Stall Road Recovery After $1B Funding Shortfall

Potholes spreading across the intersection of Pulaski Highway and Monument Street offer a street-level view of what nearly $1 billion in lost state road funding looks like. City officials say Baltimore is slowly clawing back from a 15-year shortfall in Maryland's Highway User Revenue program that left roads, bridges and traffic signals deteriorating across the city, but they warn that any further reduction in transportation funding could stall the recovery before it takes hold.

According to city budget data, cuts to Maryland's Highway User Revenue program over the past decade and a half have cost Baltimore nearly $1 billion that would have supported road work. To partially fill the gap, the city relied on transportation bonds between 2014 and 2023 while maintenance needs continued to mount.

"The backlog is so vast because of that 10-year period where there was no investment," said Laura Larsen, Baltimore's budget director, during a briefing to the Planning Commission on Thursday. Officials now face the difficult task of deciding which projects deliver the most impact as the city tries to chip away at years of deferred maintenance.

The fiscal 2026 budget marks a turning point on paper: Baltimore allocated $94.1 million in Highway User Revenue funds to transportation capital projects, the largest such investment in roughly two decades. But that milestone sits against a backdrop of accumulated neglect, and city officials have been explicit that the backlog will not be resolved quickly.

Larsen's reference to a "10-year period" of no investment sits alongside broader city language describing the shortfall as spanning 15 years, a discrepancy the city has not publicly explained. What is consistent across the city's own accounting is the scale of what was lost and the fragility of the progress now being made. Another drop in state transportation funding, officials caution, could reverse gains that took years of bonding and budget maneuvering just to begin.