“Alaska’s infrastructure is vital not just to our economy, but to everyday functions of life: the water in our faucets, the products delivered from distant places, and the expansive networks of roads and airports that allow us to quickly travel across Alaska,” said Alaska State Senator James Kaufman. “I want to thank the ASCE Alaska Section for putting together this Infrastructure Report Card which will help better inform Alaskans about the conditions and needs of our critical infrastructure.”
Alaska’s bridges received the highest grade on the report card, with a ‘B+’, a two-step increase over the 2021 report card. Over the last four years, the percentage of bridges in poor conditions dropped from 7% to 6.4%, and the number of bridges with weight restrictions also fell. Alaska’s bridge inventory is one of the most modern in the country, with an average bridge age of 37 years. The state has invested heavily in a bridge management plan, prioritizing maintenance projects to ensure bridges that connect communities remain reliable. Roads in Alaska received a ‘C’ grade, the same as the last report card. Only 6,188 of the state’s 17,637 miles of road are paved, and while Alaska is the largest state in the nation in square miles, it has the fifth lowest number of road miles. Less than one percent of roads on the national highway system are in poor condition, and the state’s transportation asset management plan focuses on preventing roads with fair pavement quality from falling into the poor category. The remote nature of Alaska’s roads makes maintaining the state’s roads expensive. It costs $27,572 to maintain a mile of road in the state, compared to the national average of $14,546. While Alaska’s roads and bridges are performing well, one key funding source is no longer as effective as it once was. The state’s gas tax of eight cents a gallon hasn’t been increased since 1970, and as fuel efficiency increases and construction costs rise, the gas tax loses purchasing power.
“With a small and spread-out population, Alaska’s infrastructure needs are as unique as the rest of this state, and the extreme cold conditions Alaskans face in the winter presents challenges for the infrastructure Alaskans rely on every day,” said David Gamez, chair of the Alaska Infrastructure Report Card committee. “This report card shows the steps taken across the state to ensure those systems remain reliable and what we can do to ensure the long-term success of these systems in the coming decades.”
The remote nature of Alaska’s towns and villages means many Alaskans rely on ports, airplanes, and marine highways to deliver goods and for transportation to other parts of the state. Alaska’s aviation grade dropped one level to a ‘C-’ in the 2025 report card. Harsh weather conditions mean many airports have a limited time in the summer when construction crews can complete necessary improvements to tackle Alaska’s $4 billion in airport infrastructure needs. Nearly 200 airports do not have weather stations, which are a crucial source of information for pilots to take off and land safely. The state’s marine highway system’s ‘D’ grade is the same as in 2021. The system has an aging fleet of vessels and must pay for growing maintenance while dealing with budget cutbacks.
Alaska’s ports saw a one-step grade improvement to ‘C-’ in the 2025 report card. The Don Young Port of Alaska in Anchorage, which handles 75 percent of the state’s inbound cargo, is undergoing a $2 billion modernization program to improve its resiliency and safety and to accommodate modern shipping operations. Alaska’s ports also help support the cruise industry which brought 1.65 million visitors to Alaska in 2024.
Water is our most valuable resource, and Alaska’s drinking water systems received a ‘D+’ grade. The state has $4.5 billion in water infrastructure needs over the next 20 years. Thirty-two rural communities in Alaska don’t have in-home piped water or a community watering point, and people must haul water to homes and businesses. Communities with drinking water systems must build them to handle Alaska’s harsh winter conditions, which means pipes are buried several feet underground so they aren’t damaged by the freeze-thaw cycle, and above-ground pipes need insulation and circulation systems to prevent water from freezing. These necessary precautions increase construction and operation costs, complicating repairs to leaking or broken pipes.
The 2025 Report Card for Alaska’s Infrastructure includes several recommendations to raise the grades:
- Dedicated and Sustainable Funding: To address Alaska’s infrastructure maintenance and improvement needs, better dedicated funding sources should be established. With a gas tax that hasn’t been raised since 1970 and reliance on federal funding, Alaska needs a sustainable model to ensure critical infrastructure projects aren’t delayed due to insufficient funding./li>
- Regulation for Long-Term Planning: Implement long-term planning regulations for asset management across all infrastructure categories. Expanding Asset Management Plans to include non-federal assets would improve the prioritization and efficiency of infrastructure investments.
- Enhancing Resilience: Incorporate resilience and risk management into project planning, maintenance, and operations to safeguard infrastructure against Alaska’s unique climate challenges, such as extreme weather and seismic activity. This includes prioritizing resilience planning for transportation systems that provide critical access in emergencies.
- Strengthen Interagency Coordination: Strengthen leadership and interagency coordination at the state and local levels to align federal, state, and local resources effectively. This is essential for ensuring funding and timely delivery of multi-jurisdictional projects.
- Workforce Development and Public Inclusion: Investing in hiring, retention, and training programs for operations and technical roles, and prioritizing community engagement can help address workforce shortages, ensuring that infrastructure projects are adequately staffed and aligned with local needs for successful execution and maintenance.
The report card was created as a public service to citizens and policymakers to inform them of the infrastructure needs in Alaska. Civil engineers use their expertise and school report card-style letter grades to condense complicated data into an easy-to-understand analysis of Alaska’s infrastructure network. ASCE State Report Cards are modeled after the national Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which gave America’s infrastructure an overall grade of ‘C-’ in 2021. Following its quadrennial cycle, the next national report card – the 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure – will be released on March 25, 2025.
The full report is available here.
About the American Society of Civil Engineers
Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers represents more than 160,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE works to raise awareness of the need to maintain and modernize the nation's infrastructure using sustainable and resilient practices, advocates for increasing and optimizing investment in infrastructure, and improve engineering knowledge and competency. For more information, visit www.asce.org or www.infrastructurereportcard.org and follow us on Twitter, @ASCETweets and @ASCEGovRel.
