Roads are back on top for 70% of transport executives, but the projects look different

A year ago, seaports were the sector favourite – now roads have the lead. Respondents to our 2027 Transport Infrastructure Outlook survey, produced in partnership with Infralogic, have swung firmly behind them. For infrastructure procurement teams, the more useful question isn't whether the money arrives. It's what kind of project that money will buy, and what that project will demand from the people who tender it.

Sentiment and deal flow point the same way

The survey asked 150 senior executives across Asia-Pacific, EMEA and the Americas which types of transport infrastructure would see the greatest increase in value invested globally over the next two years. Roads came out on top: 70% now place them in their top two sectors, up from 51% a year ago. Airports are close behind at 62%, pulled by demand that has outpaced capacity. Bullishness on rail and seaports has tempered: 55% and 43% respectively, down from 63% and 66% a year ago, when seaports were the sector favourite.

Infralogic's project data backs the sentiment. Roads projects dominated 2025, with 194 of the year's 661 transport infrastructure transactions. Those road deals were worth US$96.4bn, up 11% in volume and 28% in value year-on-year in a year when total transport deal value reached US$317bn. The long-range picture is similar. PwC’s Global Infrastructure Outlook expects roads and bridges to absorb US$30.6 trillion through 2050.

Renewal, not just expansion

The report identifies two distinct forces behind road investment. In emerging markets, the driver is connectivity and freight. India's National Highway Authority is building or upgrading more than 34,800 kilometres of highways under its Bharatmala Pariyojana programme.

In mature markets, the driver is renewal. The US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has directed federal capital into highway rehabilitation since 2022, targeting decades of deferred maintenance. Its surface transportation authorities have since been extended to 11 December 2026 through a stopgap funding act, with a long-term reauthorisation still the goal. That leaves state agencies planning on short horizons. You can read more on the extension here .

Technology adds a third layer, and it's largely a retrofit story. The report describes governments fitting existing road networks with IoT sensors, AI traffic management and vehicle-to-everything communication systems. IoT is also the technology respondents rate highest for its potential to transform the provision and maintenance of transport infrastructure, cited by 68%.

Different in character, not in ambition

Practitioners interviewed for the report describe the same shift on the ground in Australia. Luke Whistler, Executive Director of Delta Infrastructure Advisory and Deputy Chair of Infrastructure Association of Queensland, puts it plainly: "Roads will continue to have a focus, but in a different character to the greenfield mega-road projects we've seen. The sentiment is more focused on upgrading and adapting existing infrastructure rather than building new assets from scratch."

Peter Jones, Managing Director of MBB Group, agrees: "Broadly yes, on roads, but the character of road investment is changing. I don't think we'll see projects at the scale of WestConnex or North East Link in Australia over the next decade."

For Peter, the shift is about purpose as much as scale. "The honest read is that it's less about one mode dominating another and more about investment becoming more directly linked to a specific need case – the Olympics, high-speed connectivity – rather than just infrastructure catch-up, which really characterised the past decade."

That raises the bar for the business case too. As Luke says: "We're still on a journey to adequately measure social benefit, it's no longer just about adding a lane and calculating travel time savings."

Why upgrades are harder to procure

Smaller in scale doesn't mean simpler to deliver. Working alongside live traffic, buried services and ageing asset records raises the cost of every unknown. Both practitioners describe a step change in how much investigation happens before a project goes to market.

"The level of field investigation we do now is 10 times what we did 10 years ago," says Peter, "and that goes directly to efficiency, it reduces unknown risks and gives the market something it can actually price with confidence." Luke sees the same trend: "What we're now seeing is early identification of high-risk items, engaging utility companies to produce designs early so contractors can price with certainty and genuinely involve the appropriate parties and asset owners from the outset."

Marc Allen, Executive Advisor at RP Infrastructure, notes that the procurement model is adapting to match: "Earlier shortlisting and paid Early Contractor Involvement phases are also becoming more common."

All of this front-loads the information problem. Site investigations, utility designs and existing asset data have to reach every bidder in the right version and at the right time , with a record of who saw what.

"It's not just about storing documents securely. Sensitive information is constantly being shared between internal teams, suppliers, advisors and external stakeholders," says Audrey Bailly, Business Development Director at Ansarada. "When that communication happens across email, shared drives or disconnected systems, it becomes very difficult to know who has access to what."

That is the gap purpose-built platforms such as Ansarada Procure are designed to close, and it matters because respondents across all sectors rank progress monitoring and reporting (49%) and documentation (47%) among the areas most in need of improvement.

Upgrades also bring construction to the doorsteps of people who already use the road. Community engagement has more than doubled as an area needing improvement, from 23% to 48%. Jones doesn't soften it: "An infrastructure project is immensely disruptive, the construction is big, noisy, often 24/7."

The full sector breakdown, Infralogic's top 10 deal tables and the complete interviews with Luke, Peter, Marc and Audrey are in the Transport Infrastructure Outlook 2027 .

Bring order to complex road procurements

Every road upgrade adds parties, documents and interfaces. Your job is to keep them all moving in the same direction. Ansarada Procure gives you one secure environment to share site and asset data with bidders, run Q&A, track bidder status and keep a complete audit trail from first clarification to award. Book a demo at ansarada.com/procure