US Infrastructure: 2026 Funding Gaps Hit Small Business

That late afternoon sun hitting the rusted rebar of the unfinished overpass is a perfect monument to stalled progress in South Fulton County. For Maria Rodriguez, who owns “Maria’s Mezcal & More” on Old National Highway, it’s more than just ugly. “Every day, I see fewer cars,” she says, pointing at the empty street. “Customers tell me the detours are too long, the roads too rough. They just go to Fayetteville now, or Peachtree City.” Maria’s story isn’t unique. It shows what happens when uneven infrastructure spending creates regional economic disparities that just choke the life out of communities already trying to get by. What happens when the promise of progress never shows up?

Maria’s business, a great spot for authentic Oaxacan food and crafts, had been doing well for almost 20 years. Her location right off a major state route used to be a huge plus. Then the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) project started: a planned expansion of State Route 314 with a new interchange at Old National Highway. Construction kicked off with a lot of noise in 2022, promising better commutes and easier access for everyone. Two years later, the project is stuck at 40% complete, bogged down by money problems and fights with contractors, turning the once-busy road into a maze of cones and broken concrete that walls off businesses like Maria’s from their customers.

This story is playing out all over the country, especially in places far from the big urban centers where communities are stuck with crumbling infrastructure and an investment stream that never seems to reach them. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) slapped a C- grade on the nation’s infrastructure in a 2024 report, calling out chronic underinvestment in everything from roads and bridges to water systems and broadband. These national grades also hide some pretty stark regional differences. Wealthier counties, which have bigger tax bases and can afford sophisticated grant-writers, consistently pull in a bigger piece of the funding pie, leaving economically struggling regions even more behind.

Just look at how the funding works. A huge chunk of federal infrastructure money, like the funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), is based on matching grants. That means state and local governments have to pony up a percentage of the total project cost. For a place like Fulton County, which has wealthy areas like Sandy Springs and Johns Creek, coming up with matching funds for projects north of I-20 isn’t usually a problem. South Fulton is a different world. With lower property values and a smaller tax base, the competition for limited local money is fierce, so finding a 20% or 30% match for a multi-million dollar GDOT project becomes a massive obstacle.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Dr. Alana Hayes, an urban economist at Georgia State University, said at a recent panel on regional development. “Regions with strong economies can afford to invest in infrastructure, which then attracts more businesses and people, which strengthens their tax base. On the other hand, areas with declining economies can’t even fund basic maintenance, let alone new projects, so they just keep declining.” Dr. Hayes contrasted the ongoing modernization of the I-285 corridor in North Fulton, which is getting plenty of federal and state cash, with the stalled projects in South Fulton. The I-285 expansion, though complicated, has moved along at a steady clip because the resources and political will are there, while the Old National Highway project has been hit with delay after delay, showing a clear lack of strong support.

Maria got more frustrated every month. Her regulars, complaining about the “nightmare” of working through the construction, started going to places in nearby Fayette County where the roads are newer and less of a headache. “I tried everything,” Maria said. “Special discounts, online ordering with delivery, but even the delivery drivers complain about the potholes.” Her small business, which had employed five people, had to start cutting back. She had to let Javier, her part-time cook of seven years, go. The effects of stalled infrastructure are immediate and they hit people hard.

In these situations, local leadership and strategic planning are everything. While you need federal and state money, communities have to prove they’re ready and have a clear vision. Applications for competitive grants, like the ones from the Economic Development Administration (EDA), demand detailed engineering plans, environmental assessments, and solid economic impact analyses. Smaller, understaffed municipal planning departments often don’t have these resources. “We often see applications from smaller cities that are simply less polished, less complete,” an EDA program officer told us anonymously because of agency policy. “The need is there, but they don’t have the capacity to package that need in a way that meets the federal guidelines.”

Down in South Fulton, community advocates started pushing GDOT for more transparency and accountability. The South Fulton Business Association, where Maria is a board member, held a few town halls to get their concerns heard. They got local politicians and GDOT reps to show up, but real solutions were hard to come by. They found out that the project’s original environmental impact statement had completely underestimated how badly traffic diversions would affect local businesses. An oversight like that, which might seem small on a huge project, can absolutely devastate a small business.

These disparities create deep, long-term problems. A lack of reliable transportation makes it harder to get to jobs, schools, and doctors. Commuting from South Fulton to a job in Midtown Atlanta without good public transit or decent roads is a daily struggle. It puts a ceiling on economic mobility for residents and tells new businesses not to bother investing. And bad infrastructure also scares off residential development which leads to a shrinking population and tax base. This is about the very fabric of community development. Is it any surprise that a 2025 report by the Georgia Technology Authority found huge gaps in broadband access in Georgia’s rural and exurban areas, which directly hurts remote work and education?

Maria finally saw a little bit of hope. Spurred on by the South Fulton Business Association’s work, she got together with other struggling business owners to commission their own localized economic impact study. They funded it with a small grant from a local community foundation, and it gave them hard data on lost revenue and job displacement that they could tie directly to the stalled construction. Armed with that verifiable data, the association went to the Fulton County Commission and their state reps. They laid out a powerful case for getting the funding moving and for more oversight of the GDOT project.

The pressure yielded results. In early 2026, the County Commission released emergency funds to GDOT to fix some of the project’s most pressing problems, focusing specifically on the Old National Highway interchange. They also set up a new task force, with local business owners on it, to keep an eye on the progress. The project still isn’t done, but the work has picked up speed, and GDOT put up clearer signs and temporary access roads to help with the disruptions. Last month, Maria saw a small uptick in foot traffic. It’s a fragile sign of recovery. It took people working together with real evidence to make a change.

The story of Maria’s Mezcal & More teaches a clear lesson: communities have to get their hands dirty with infrastructure planning and funding. Simply waiting for problems to fix themselves is a losing game. It’s essential to understand the tangled web of federal, state, and local funding, to fight for specific projects with data to back up your arguments, and to build strong coalitions if you want to overcome the regional economic disparities that come from uneven infrastructure funding. The survival of a small business, the health of a neighborhood, and the economic future of a whole region can depend on these boring details of concrete, asphalt, and legislative budgets.

Fixing these infrastructure gaps means attacking the problem from multiple angles. We need policy changes that lower the local matching fund requirements for economically distressed areas, and we have to invest in technical assistance programs that help smaller towns get better at winning grants. These moves can help make sure infrastructure money actually builds equitable growth everywhere, not just in the places that are already doing fine.