Long Island road spending falls short despite high wealth and taxes, analysis finds

On a hot summer afternoon in Great Neck Gardens, cars trundled over bumpy pavement and cracks on Station Road — an otherwise idyllic street flanked by spacious homes, mature oaks and wide lawns.

Dropping her kids off at summer camp, resident Christina Jong can't put her phone in the holder. "It always pops off with the bumps," she said. "My babies are like, 'Mommy, just hold the phone!' "

Ten miles away, in Uniondale, Joe Felix, 34, blamed a recent flat tire on potholes on the street where he lives, Duryea Avenue.

"Sometimes they'll patch [the road] up, but that doesn't really do nothing. Once the rain comes, it just gets worse," he said.

Such complaints are common among Long Island drivers, and it's not their imagination. The Island's local roads are in worse condition than those of most state regions — with 42% in "poor" or "fair" condition, compared with about 35% statewide, according to the most recent data on federal-aid-eligible roads. While these represent about a fifth of all locally maintained roads and tend to be in better condition than other roads, the comparison highlights a persistent question asked by Long Islanders: In one of the nation's wealthiest regions, with taxes so high, why are there so many potholes?

Money spent on maintenance, repair and upgrades — balanced against damage from vehicles and weather — matters when it comes to road condition.

A Newsday analysis found that while Long Island spends a significant amount per mile of road, it spends the least of any region outside New York City when measured relative to population or traffic volume. Newsday analyzed local government spending between 2021 and 2024 on road maintenance, repairs and upgrades as categorized by the state comptroller.

"The No. 1 complaint that we get ... when property tax bills come due is, 'My tax bill went up — when's my road getting paved?' " said Dan Goodwin, Southold Town's highway superintendent, who is responsible for about 400 lane-miles of road on the North Fork and Fishers Island.

Constituents are often surprised when he tells them to look carefully at their bill. "In Southold Town, the general rule of thumb is about 4% of your total tax bill comes to the highway department," said Goodwin, a Democrat. In Babylon, town officials said it's typically around 3.3%.

Suffolk County spent less per capita on its roads between 2021 and 2023 than any other county in the state, Newsday's analysis found. County Executive Edward P. Romaine, a Republican, said he's prioritized roads since taking office in 2024, a year not yet reflected in Suffolk's data from the comptroller. Nassau County spent significantly more than Suffolk per capita, but still ranked third-lowest among counties.

While counties, towns, villages and cities largely determine their own spending, they also rely on state aid, which makes up about a fifth of local road spending on Long Island. The aid comes from a mix of state and federal dollars, which pass through Albany before reaching municipalities and counties. Some of it comes from the roughly 43 cents per gallon New York drivers pay in state and federal gas taxes when filling up their tanks.

Local officials statewide have called on Albany to put more dollars into the road aid budget, especially as they face soaring inflation in the highway construction industry. Nationally, the highway construction cost index rose more than 70% between late 2020 and late 2024 — more than three times the increase in the urban consumer price index.

Many Long Island officials from both political parties also claim the annual road aid is not fairly distributed.

"People wonder why our roads aren't that good," Romaine told Newsday. "We're not getting what I would consider our fair share."

Newsday analyzed aid distribution under five state "formula programs," which form the bulk of local road aid. The formulas use a combination of factors like lane-mileage, government type and vehicle registrations to distribute aid. They also consider precedents set as far back as 46 years ago — when demographic and driving patterns were different from today, according to experts.

This year, the formulas were used to divide up about $1.1 billion among around 1,500 municipalities and counties across the state. That amounts to about $57 per person statewide or $5,899 per lane-mile, which is one mile of one lane of road.

But Long Island gets significantly less than that, whether measured per capita (about $32) or per mile of asphalt ($4,123). To look at it another way, this year, the region was allocated about 8% of all aid — significantly less than its share of locally maintained lane-miles (12%) and the population (15%). 

Excluding counties, the aid amounts to $811 million, or about $41 per person statewide but $23 per person on Long Island.

The formulas also disfavor suburban areas upstate, many of which, like Long Island, are wealthier than average and more capable of paying for their roads using local revenue. Nassau and Suffolk counties have the highest and second-highest median household incomes in the state, respectively, while Nassau ranks among the top 10 counties nationally. Experts also point out that the sources of damage to roads, such as severe winters and heavy vehicle use, differ from region to region, affecting their need for money.

Compared nationally, about 25% of New York's roads are not in "acceptable" condition, versus 19% nationwide, according to 2023 data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 

While the busiest highways like the Long Island Expressway and parkways are state-maintained, many vehicle trips start and end on a local road — whether it be on a tree-lined residential street, a commercial corridor or a downtown thoroughfare. Local roads make up about 88% of lane-miles on Long Island.

The Brookhaven Town highway department manages around 3,600 lane-miles — the third-largest road system in New York, after the state and New York City.

Superintendent Dan Losquadro, a Republican, said maintaining the roads is about "quality of life."

While safety advocates sometimes point to the need for design changes — such as adding crosswalks, medians or protected bike lanes — lack of upkeep can also lead to safety issues like potholes or faded lines, said Ted Miller, a public health professor at Michigan State University who specializes in crash prevention.

"Drivers make hundreds of decisions a minute. None of us get 100% on everything," Miller said. "The less deficiencies [in] the roadways [there] are, the less harm comes from the problems with drivers and the vehicles."

Long Island spends little relative to traffic, population

Many factors can damage roads, leading to different costs of maintenance in different places.

Pavement in the Adirondacks — where winters are considerably harsher, with more freeze-thaw cycles — could have a lifespan 10% to 20% shorter than on Long Island, according to David Orr, a civil engineer who directs the Cornell University Local Roads Program.

Some areas of Long Island experience regular flooding. Goodwin said his team spends a lot of effort improving drainage in Southold.

Traffic is another important consideration. Vehicles degrade pavement — but their weight is more important than their total number. A 30-ton fully loaded dump truck causes 4,000 to 6,000 times more damage than a 3-ton SUV, according to Orr.

State Sen. Mario Mattera (R-Huntington), who sits on the Senate's transportation committee, said he is concerned by damage caused by the rise of delivery services like Amazon, which use heavy trucks and have "become part of normal everyday life" on Long Island.

Other factors are unique to cities, adding to their costs, according to Barbara Van Epps, executive director of the New York State Conference of Mayors.

"In Albany or out in Syracuse, they're dealing with multilevel highways and the tunnels and the overpasses and those things. Those cost more to build, they cost more to maintain," she said.

Planning and foresight also play a role. If a road falls into disrepair or drainage isn't improved, the costs of fixing it can increase exponentially, Goodwin said. 

Because of differing costs, it's difficult to say how much any given locality should spend on local roads. But given Long Island’s worse conditions, Newsday compared how much the state's local governments spent on maintenance, repairs and improvement.

Over the four years, the Island’s counties, towns, villages and cities spent an estimated $21,695 per lane-mile each year — more than any other region in the state except for New York City.

But because the Island is densely populated and has so much traffic, Long Island’s spending actually translates into relatively little. Local governments spent $166 per capita or about $43 per 1,000 miles traveled by vehicles — the lowest of any region outside of New York City.

Suffolk County spent only slightly below the statewide rate for counties when measured per lane-mile, but it spent the least of any county relative to population or traffic volume.

Romaine said he's prioritized roads since taking over.

"Last year I submitted the largest capital budget in this county's history," he said. "As a county, we needed to invest more in our infrastructure and our roads."

Among Long Island's towns, Islip spent the least per capita, followed by Babylon. 

Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter, a Republican, said in a statement that many roads are "aging and in need of road reconstruction and/or repaving," adding, "Having adequate resources is a challenge."

Babylon Commissioner for Public Works Vincent Piccoli said the roughly $17 million the town spends on road maintenance and improvement represents a significant portion of the town's budget.

"On Long Island, we all pay extraordinarily high taxes," he said. "I'm not advocating taking money away from schools ... but more than three-quarters of it goes to the school districts." School districts have separate budgets from municipalities.

Officials from Islip, Suffolk County, Southold, Brookhaven, Babylon and Oyster Bay all said part of the problem is Long Island doesn't receive enough aid from the state.

Nassau County officials did not respond to requests for comment about road spending.

Long Island, suburbs statewide receive less aid

State aid provides municipalities and counties stability through a predictable flow of money coming in every year, according to Orr, from the Cornell roads program.

"It spreads out the financial burden," he said. "It's like a big capacitor in an electrical system or a dam on a watershed."

Each year, lawmakers in Albany decide how much to put into each of five "formula funding" programs, some of which have been around for decades.

According to Joseph Morrissey, an assistant commissioner for the state DOT, the crite ria for dividing up aid were determined through political negotiations among elected officials at the time each program was established. 

Four of the formula programs — the largest of which is the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program, or CHIPS, created in 1981 — take into account a mix of lane mileage, vehicle registrations and government type, differentiating between counties, towns, villages and cities. CHIPS also considers how much aid a government received in 1979. The fifth and newest program — State Touring Routes, created in 2021 — gives money to only a handful of municipalities with roads specially designated by the state.

The aid distribution disadvantages suburban towns like those on Long Island and elsewhere upstate. The formulas generally favor cities and villages, although New York City is an anomaly because it gets a very high allocation per lane-mile but well below statewide per capita. Meanwhile, rural areas tend to "win" on aid relative to population, but "lose" on aid relative to road length.

Still, many of the areas that get the least aid also have a greater capacity to pay for their own roads. Although Long Island was allocated the second-least aid per capita and the least aid per lane-mile of any region this year, it has the second-most taxable property per lane-mile, which is a measure of an area’s wealth relative to its financial burden from roads.

However, there are exceptions, both on Long Island and elsewhere, where governments that are "wealthier" in terms of their tax base receive more aid than "poorer" governments.

For example, the city of Rye in Westchester County receives far more aid than the village of Patchogue, both per capita and per lane-mile, despite also having around five times more local property value backing up each lane-mile.

New York City, which receives the most aid of any region when measured per lane-mile but the least per capita, also has the largest tax base for its roads.

Lawrence Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies, said it's also important to consider road aid in a larger sense. For example, Long Islanders get less aid for roads, but benefit from state subsidization of the Long Island Rail Road and regional bus systems.

On the other hand, a study by the Long Island Regional Planning Council found Suffolk and Nassau contributed more in state taxes in 2022 than they received in state expenditures. The study included everything from road aid to railroad subsidies, health care and education spending, according to John Cameron, the council's chairman.

Why don't we spend more?

While Long Island's wealth places it in a better position to increase road spending than many other state regions, doing so can be politically difficult.

"It's up to the annual budget of each [municipality], and they of course could increase it, but then where are you going to cut the services?" said Marc Herbst, president of the Long Island Contractors' Association.

All of the Long Island officials who spoke with Newsday said they think the state should increase its road aid budget.

Losquadro, of Brookhaven, said he traveled to Albany recently with other superintendents to lobby for more aid for town highways. He was upset the state budget added $800 million this year for state roads to make up for inflation, but didn't have a similar supplement for the state's largest local roads program.

Morrissey, from the DOT, said in a statement this year's budget "continues the unprecedented State support for local municipal governments to renew and modernize their roads and bridges." He added that the current five-year plan, which ends in 2027, has $6.6 billion for local roads, around $3.2 billion more than in the last five-year plan, which ended in 2020.

Local officials also told Newsday they'd like the state to change the formulas in a way that would provide more to Long Island.

Fred Hiffa, a former deputy state DOT commissioner who now lobbies for town highway superintendents, agreed the formulas have become outdated, since they are based, in part, on how much of the state's population was urban, suburban or rural decades ago.

State Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) said she supports more aid for Long Island and that lawmakers discuss changing the formulas every session in Albany and there's "broad agreement" that the formulas should change. But agreement on exactly how to change them has been "elusive."

"Every region and every state legislator argues that their district needs and deserves more support," she said in a statement.

Assemb. Bill Magnarelli, the Syracuse Democrat who chairs the State Assembly’s transportation committee, said he is open to requesting the Department of Transportation to re-evaluate the formulas, but doesn't concede Long Island isn't getting enough, "because I don't know."

To Romaine, the formulas are easily fixed: They should be based on lane mileage, licensed drivers and registered vehicles.

Suffolk County, he said, "is number one in all three categories."

Other Long Island officials told Newsday they'd like to see a variety of changes — from basing the formulas on where gas taxes are collected, to including pavement condition criteria, to eliminating the State Touring Routes program, which supports only about one mile of qualifying roadway on Long Island, on the North Fork.

On the other hand, Van Epps, from the mayors’ association, said she'd like to see more weight given to population density, since repairing city roads often requires bringing sidewalks up to Americans with Disabilities Act code and dealing with underground infrastructure.

Many of the factors affecting costs may be difficult to quantify or fit into a formula, Orr said.

"How do you write a policy for an entire state that’s as diverse as New York, that goes from as urban a place as there is on the planet to about as rural a place as you can get on the planet?" he said. "There's always going to be some metric where somebody wins and somebody loses."

Newsday's Joshua Solomon contributed reporting.