Worcester Mass. Considers $100 Million Investment in Roads and Sidewalks

Worcester leaders are putting a number behind a problem that residents already experience every day. At a City Council meeting, a plan came up to borrow $20 million each year for the next five years, totaling $100 million, for road and sidewalk upgrades.

A few months earlier in May, Worcester’s Department of Public Works was struggling to handle the workload. Pothole repair had to compete with spring street sanitation coverage with the same crews handling everything. According to reports from The Worcester Guardian, more than 4,500 pothole-related work orders were created in the last 12 months alone.

City officials paused street sweeping to focus crews on potholes instead, a sign of how limited the department's resources really were. The city's own budget office pointed to a related cause: The 2025-2026 winter was the eighth snowiest in Worcester's history, and it exposed how far the city's existing road funding fell short of what the Pavement Management Plan actually calls for.

Worcester already moved to close some of that gap this year, increasing DPW capital borrowing by $11 million, a 66 percent jump, in the fiscal 2027 budget. A $100 million, five-year commitment on top of that shows city leaders now see the problem as bigger than a single budget cycle can fix.

A five-year investment is the kind of solution needed for priorities of this size. Worcester’s DPW has been handling a budget well, and this proposal is an opportunity to give them the support they need to stop managing and start catching up.

Mass Priorities champions public dollars going toward the investments that actually improve everyday life for Massachusetts residents, and on this one, Worcester has the right priorities in mind.