Exclusive | Nearly three-quarters of infrastructure bucks — about $7.8B — go to blue states, watchdog finds

Democrat-led states have received 73% of all infrastructure funding doled out in this fiscal year — despite making up fewer than half of the states in the union, according to a transportation watchdog report shared exclusively with The Post this week.

The Center for Transportation Policy analyzed five grant programs that have approved $10.8 billion in funding since Oct. 1, 2023, from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in late 2021.

The center found $7.8 billion of that money went to Democratic-led states, while GOP-led states got just $3 billion.

The programs are under the authority of the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and help rebuild and upgrade bridges, roads, railways and other dilapidated infrastructure.

Republican governors outnumber Democratic governors, 27-23, while US Census figures indicate that that 45% of Americans live in red states while 55% live in blue states.

The District of Columbia was also considered a “blue” jurisdiction for the purpose of the analysis.

“Many factors play a role in how federal tax dollars are distributed, and our analysis suggests the political identity of state leadership could be one of those elements,” Jackson Shedelbower, executive director of the Center for Transportation Policy, told The Post. “Dishing out infrastructure spending should be a bipartisan exercise, not a political tool.”

Biden, 81, signed the $1.2 trillion bill into law in November 2021, setting aside $660 billion specifically for transportation funding. FHWA was charged with managing around $365 billion.

Lawmakers of both parties have crowed to their constituents about securing the funding, with some even getting to enjoy the fruits of their legislative efforts in their own backyards.

For example, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), an avid cyclist, nabbed $19.5 million to “fill key gaps” on a bike trail connecting his suburban neighborhood to downtown Cleveland.

Brown’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Even when broken down by individual grant programs, Democratic-led states came out ahead.

The Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects (INFRA) program allocated $2.9 billion in grants to rehabilitate freight transportation networks, distributing $2.2 billion to Democratic states and $674.5 million to Republican states.

The National Infrastructure Project Assistance (Mega) program for bridge replacements and transport terminals handed out $2 billion, $1.6 billion of which went to blue states and $418 million of which went to red ones.

Two other programs — one meant to secure the longevity and safety of current bridges, and the other to build new ones, handed out more than $5 billion in investments and were split $3.6 billion (Democratic) to $1.4 billion (Republican) and $15 million (Democratic) to $12 million (Republican), respectively.

The Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program to improve road designs, decrease fatalities and injuries and “promote safer, more equitable transportation networks across urban and rural areas” funneled $40 million to blue states and $24 million to red ones.

Only the Rural Surface Transportation (Rural) program allocated more grants for Republican-led states ($390 million) than Democratic-led states ($255 million).

In a speech celebrating the law in 2021, Biden told attendees in the White House State Dining Room that its passage proved his party could “deliver” on campaign promises.

“The American people have made clear one overwhelming thing, I think — and I really mean it,” he said, “all the talk about the elections and what do they mean and everything. They want us to deliver. They want us to deliver. Democrats, they want us to deliver.”

Reps for the Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.