The Department of Transportation is carrying 590 capital projects with a combined project budget of $36.35 billion as managing agency, per the City's Capital Projects Dashboard for the May 2026 reporting period. About $7.63 billion of that has already been spent. And before you get too excited — not all of it is alive. Forty-eight of those projects, $1.65 billion worth, are marked completed, cancelled, on hold, withdrawn or transferred. The book that's actually breathing is 542 projects and $34.70 billion.
Here's the thing, though. That's only the half DOT builds itself. Another 311 projects and $8.42 billion are DOT's money with DDC's name on the contract — the Department of Design and Construction manages them (13 of those, $475 million, are completed or on hold). That's your street reconstruction, your pedestrian ramps, sidewalks, plazas, the Vision Zero corridor packages. They show up as DDC solicitations under DDC EPINs, with DOT paying the bill. Put both halves together and DOT's capital universe is 901 projects and $44.8 billion — the biggest of any city agency once you set the four borough jails aside.
“Two doors. Same money. A contractor watching one of them is looking at half the market and thinking it's the whole thing.”
So why does that matter to you? Because the agency's own bid page and its DDC-managed work never sit in the same place. Bridges, ferries, streetlights, traffic signals, marine structures and bridge-component packages are DOT competitive sealed bids under an 841 EPIN. Streets, ramps, sidewalks and safety corridors are DDC competitive sealed bids under an 850 EPIN. Two doors. Same money. A contractor watching one of them is looking at half the market and thinking it's the whole thing.
This is the sixth stop in our agency series — the MTA's budget and capital plan, the SCA's $21 billion, DDC's $43 billion book and NYCHA came before it, and DEP is running alongside — and the DOT installment leans on the DDC one harder than any other, because a third of DDC's book is DOT's money.
Four numbers, four different things. You'll see all of these quoted as “DOT's budget.” They aren't the same thing, and mixing them up is how you size a market wrong:
| The number | What it actually is | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| $36.35 billion (+ $8.42 billion via DDC) | Total project budget across the 590 DOT-managed projects carried in the City's financial system (542 of them active), plus the 311 DOT-sponsored projects DDC manages. That's lifetime project cost, not what gets spent this year. | Capital Projects Dashboard, May 2026 reporting period |
| $14.31 billion | DOT's planned capital commitments for FY2026–FY2030 in the Preliminary Capital Commitment Plan — $2,502M / $2,353M / $2,281M / $2,138M / $5,034M by year. A commitment is a plan to register a contract. It's a market signal, not a purchase order. | NYC Council Finance Division report on DOT's Fiscal 2027 Preliminary Plan, March 18, 2026, citing OMB's plan |
| $1.33 billion | OMB's FY2027 commitment target for DOT — what the budget office actually expects the agency to register in the year — against an FY2027 authorized plan of $1.67 billion. For comparison, DOT's FY2026 target is $1.13 billion against a $1.64 billion authorized plan. | OMB, FY2027 Executive Budget Commitment Plan, Vol. 1, May 2026 (introduction table and Sections IV–VII; DOT is agency 841) |
| $702 million | What DOT actually committed in FY2025, against a $697 million plan — 101 percent. FY2024 actual: $616 million. These are OMB's own figures for DOT as managing agency. | OMB, FY2027 Executive Budget Commitment Plan, Vol. 1, Section X, Financial Indicators |
Now, keep the chain straight, because every figure in this piece sits on one link of it. A planned commitment becomes a registered contract only when an award is made and the Comptroller registers it. A registered contract becomes a check only as the work gets billed. Let's say a bridge shows up on the plan at $100 million. That's a commitment. Nobody's bought anything. When a firm wins it and the Comptroller stamps it, that's a contract. When the first steel goes in and the first requisition gets approved — that's a check. Commitment, contract, award, check. Four different days, sometimes years apart.
The gap is the part you should actually read. The plan year says $2.35 billion. OMB's target says $1.33 billion. That's the budget office telling you, in its own table, that it does not expect DOT to put the full plan line under contract in FY2027. The plan tells you what exists; the target tells you what the budget office thinks will reach a contract. And the record backs the budget office, not the plan: DOT committed $616 million in FY2024 and $702 million in FY2025 — that second one was 101 percent of a $697 million plan, per OMB's own performance table. So a $1.33 billion target would nearly double the agency's recent pace. Price your year off the target and the track record, not the plan.
Where the money sits flips between the two years. OMB's breakdown of DOT's FY2026 authorized plan ($1.645 billion) puts $855 million — 52 percent — on the Waterway Bridges (BR) line alone, and almost all of that is one budget line, “Rehabilitation of Brooklyn Bridge,” at $841.3 million. Then Highways $311 million, Traffic $194 million, Highway Bridges $186 million, Ferries $49 million. The FY2027 authorized plan ($1.668 billion) looks nothing like it: Highway Bridges $726 million (43 percent), Traffic $446 million, Highways $345 million, Parks-owned bridges $78 million, Ferries $47 million, equipment $26 million — and Waterway Bridges just $1 million. Now look at what the Council saw in March, working from the January Preliminary Plan: $843.3 million in FY2027 for the Brooklyn Bridge, “the bulk of this funding for hardening and security upgrades.” Between January and May that line appears to have moved into the current fiscal year. We want to be straight about that one: it's our inference from laying the two plans side by side, not something either document says.
Where the $36 billion sits: bridges, then DOT's own paving crews. Here's DOT's own book grouped by the City's Ten-Year Capital Strategy category — active and inactive, one row per FMS project, total project budget, May 2026:
| Category (as the dashboard labels it) | Projects | Project budget | Spent to date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bridge life extension and miscellaneous work | 92 | $7.11 billion | $357 million |
| Primary street resurfacing | 22 | $6.46 billion | $3.66 billion |
| FAIR bridges | 62 | $5.99 billion | $1.17 billion |
| “Park pedestrian bridges” (includes the $1.91 billion BQE design-build, mislabeled) | 25 | $3.50 billion | $267 million |
| East River bridges | 9 | $3.35 billion | $722 million |
| Pedestrian ramp construction | 20 | $2.11 billion | $352 million |
| Primary street reconstruction | 111 | $2.02 billion | $3 million |
| Signal installation and computerization | 29 | $1.38 billion | $188 million |
| Bridge painting | 12 | $663 million | $10 million |
| Reconstruction of ferry terminal facilities | 41 | $603 million | $51 million |
| Facility reconstruction (yards, plants, garages) | 29 | $562 million | $16 million |
| Installation of lampposts and luminaires | 46 | $404 million | $35 million |
| Traffic work with highway reconstruction | 9 | $335 million | $133 million |
| Reconstruction of ferry boats | 6 | $332 million | $255 million |
| Traffic work with FAIR bridges | 3 | $310 million | $202 million |
| All other categories | 74 | $1.21 billion | $203 million |
Add the bridge lines together — the six labeled categories plus the Williamsburg Bridge Contract 9 close-out the dashboard files under “useful life extension” — and bridges are $21.1 billion across 204 projects. That's 58 percent of everything DOT manages directly. The agency says it owns, operates and maintains more than 800 bridges and tunnels, including 24 movable bridges and four tunnels. And the biggest single lines are almost all bridges that haven't been designed yet: Washington Bridge over the Harlem River ($1.08 billion, pre-design, nothing spent), Union Street over the Gowanus Canal ($1.04 billion, pre-design), Brooklyn Bridge hazard mitigation ($814 million), Queensboro Bridge ramps and lower roadway ($612 million), Williamsburg Bridge Contract 10 steel ($541 million), Grand Street over Newtown Creek ($499 million, in design), Manhattan Bridge Contract 16 underdeck steel ($474 million), Trans-Manhattan Expressway ($470 million, in design), Williamsburg Bridge painting ($430 million), Pulaski Bridge ($399 million), Miller Highway ($393 million). The Council report puts Queensboro construction at 2031–2033. That list is the next decade's bridge lettings, and the dashboard is the only public place they're all written down together.
The second-biggest line isn't a bid market at all. Primary street resurfacing carries $6.46 billion, and $5.71 billion of it sits on two lines — “In-house resurfacing – crews” ($3.88 billion) and “In-house resurfacing lump sum – asphalt” ($1.83 billion) — that pay for DOT's own paving crews and the asphalt they lay. DOT's crews resurfaced 1,167.8 lane miles in Fiscal 2025 and 634.4 lane miles in the first four months of Fiscal 2026, per the Council report's reading of the Mayor's Management Report, and the agency said it worked 256,392 tons of recycled asphalt into pavement “produced in house” in FY2024 at its Hamilton Avenue plant in Brooklyn. So if you're a paving contractor reading $6.46 billion and licking your chops — stop. What an outside firm actually sees from this program is the $317 million citywide milling line and the plant itself. And the plant is real: the Harper Street asphalt plant reconstruction in Queens, a $137.7 million DOT-sponsored project that DDC is managing, is in construction procurement with the phase forecast to end March 2027. Its demolition and curb-and-fence packages have been in construction since fall 2025. The dashboard calls it a full demolition and rebuild — “all of the existing equipment, storage facilities, and related buildings will be replaced with a new state of the art plant” — plus new sanitary and storm drainage.
Pedestrian ramps ($2.11 billion) split the same way. A $707 million lump-sum rehabilitation line and a $493 million in-house-crews line sit on DOT's own book, while the borough-pair requirements contracts that outside firms actually bid — $25 million to $28 million each — sit on DDC's side. More on those in a minute.
And the 111 “primary street reconstruction” projects on DOT's book? They carry $2.02 billion and have spent $3 million. Nearly all are in pre-design. In practice, street reconstruction gets built by DDC, so expect these lines to surface as DDC solicitations in later years, not DOT bids. That's our read of how the program works, not a label in the data.
The DDC half: what DOT money buys through somebody else's portal. The 311 DOT-sponsored projects DDC is managing break down like this (one row per FMS project, May 2026):
| Category | Projects | Project budget | Spent to date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic work in conjunction with highway reconstruction (the Vision Zero corridor packages) | 79 | $2.50 billion | $539 million |
| Primary street reconstruction | 66 | $2.17 billion | $261 million |
| Trunk and distribution water-main replacement (joint street/utility jobs) | 25 | $1.08 billion | $313 million |
| Pedestrian ramp construction | 41 | $763 million | $295 million |
| Sidewalk reconstruction | 39 | $411 million | $105 million |
| Facility reconstruction (Harper Street plant and yards) | 6 | $355 million | $81 million |
| Sewer replacement and augmentation | 26 | $280 million | $4 million |
| Utility relocation for sewer and water-main projects | 9 | $252 million | $5 million |
| All other | 20 | $618 million | $126 million |
By phase: 130 projects and $3.79 billion are in design, 86 and $2.20 billion are in construction, 36 and $841 million are in construction procurement, 33 in close-out, and 13 completed or on hold. (Harper Street carries three DDC contracts under one FMS ID; we count it once, in procurement, where its main plant contract sits.) The procurement pool is the part that's on the street now or about to be. Its biggest members: Harper Street plant ($137.7 million), Delancey Street safety improvements ($94.2 million budget — awarded since the data cut, below), trench restoration Brooklyn ($67.9 million), non-standard ramp installs Brooklyn and Staten Island ($42.6 million), Safe Routes to Schools Queens ($33.3 million, open now), four “standard upgrades” pedestrian-ramp contracts at $25.5 million to $28.0 million each, the West 128th Street pedestrian bridge ($22.9 million), Southern Boulevard ($19.9 million, open now), Henwood Place step street ($19.2 million), Park Avenue at the Crossover in Brooklyn ($18.6 million), and the prior-notice sidewalk contracts by borough ($5.6 million to $18.2 million).
Two warnings before you start counting that list like it's a bid calendar. First, the combined street-and-utility jobs carry two or three FMS IDs for one contract — Delancey is HWM2025 (DOT, $94.2 million) and MED-667 (water main, $15.9 million); the Van Sinderen Avenue job is SEK002384 and NDF-IBZ; Davidson Avenue is HWXS711 and SEX002272. Project counts overstate contract counts. Second, a project budget has design, management and contingency baked in, so the construction contract routinely comes in well under the budget line. Look at it: Delancey's $94.2 million budget became a $47,998,629.36 award to Maspeth Supply Co. LLC on DDC's awarded-contracts list. Southern Boulevard's $19.9 million budget carries a $14.33 million agency estimate in PASSPort. Safe Routes Queens' $33.3 million budget carries a $22.54 million estimate. The budget line is the ceiling of the whole project; your contract is a piece of it.
So here's the rule, and it's worth taping to the wall: bridges, ferries, signals, streetlights, marine structures, yards and bridge-component rehabs are DOT's own bids (EPIN prefix 841). Streets, ramps, sidewalks, plazas, step streets, safety corridors and the asphalt plant are DDC's bids (EPIN prefix 850) with DOT's name in the sponsor field. Both run through PASSPort and both print in the City Record, but they're separate searches, separate prequalification lists and separate contract administrators.
Where the work is: “citywide” is a contract type, and the Bronx is the bridge borough. Both halves combined, by borough (total project budget, May 2026):
| Borough | DOT-managed | DOT-sponsored via DDC | Combined | Projects (combined) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citywide | $18.55 billion | $1.36 billion | $19.91 billion | 237 |
| Brooklyn | $5.48 billion | $2.00 billion | $7.48 billion | 151 |
| Manhattan | $4.81 billion | $1.29 billion | $6.10 billion | 159 |
| Queens | $3.37 billion | $2.08 billion | $5.45 billion | 165 |
| Bronx | $3.77 billion | $1.24 billion | $5.01 billion | 113 |
| Staten Island | $368 million | $459 million | $828 million | 71 |
“Citywide” is more than half of DOT's own book, and it's not a place. It's where the in-house resurfacing lines live, the East River bridges (the dashboard codes them citywide), the BQE, the LED streetlight replacement ($331 million), the accessible-pedestrian-signal requirements contracts ($217 million and $163 million), red-light and speed cameras, and the borough-pair requirements contracts. Filter the dashboard by your home borough and you'll miss most of DOT's money.
Brooklyn's DOT-managed figure is fat with one line — the $1.83 billion in-house asphalt lump sum is coded to Brooklyn, presumably because the Hamilton Avenue plant is there. Take that out and Brooklyn's DOT-direct book is about $3.65 billion, roughly level with the Bronx. Queens is the biggest DDC-side DOT borough ($2.08 billion, 53 projects): Safe Routes, the Harper Street plant, ramp and sidewalk contracts. The Bronx is the bridge borough: Shore Road over the Hutchinson River ($559 million, in design to February 2028), West Tremont Avenue over Metro-North and the Major Deegan (awarded in July, below), Boston Road over the Hutchinson River ($122 million, in construction), Grand Concourse over Metro-North ($93 million, in construction), the Nereid Avenue, I-278/Bruckner and Rikers Island bridges in pre-design, and the East 174th, 156th, 180th, 183rd and 188th Street rail crossings in design or construction. The eight-bridge component rehabilitation package open right now is a Bronx-only job. On the street side, the Bronx is also where DOT's bus program broke ground this summer: offset bus lanes on Fordham Road from Sedgwick Avenue to Boston Road (July 22) and the borough's first busway on Tremont Avenue — one mile of busway and 0.26 miles of bus lane, with bus-priority treatments from Webster Avenue to Southern Boulevard (Aug. 12), per the Mayor's Office and DOT announcements. Neither release names a dollar figure or a contractor; this is markings-and-signals work of the kind DOT's own crews and requirements contracts deliver, not a capital letting.
Manhattan's DOT book is rail crossings and highway structures: the West 79th Street Amtrak bridges ($204 million, in construction), Riverside Drive at West 158th ($177 million, in construction), Broadway Bridge over the Harlem River ($172 million, in construction), FDR northbound 42nd–49th ($146 million, design ends April 2027), the John Finley Walk promenade over the FDR ($117 million, design ends December 2026), and a cluster of West 35th–40th Street bridges over the Amtrak 30th Street branch in design or pre-design, with design phases running out to 2028–2032.
Staten Island is small on paper but it's all in one place: the ferry maintenance facility (vehicle access ramps and nose upgrade, $15.4 million, in procurement; Pier 1 and Pier 2 wharf reconstruction, $15 million each, pre-design), St. George waterfront remediation ($19 million, design to 2030), the ferry rack at Slip 1 ($23.7 million, on hold) and the Dubois Yard roof ($16.5 million, DDC-managed, in procurement).
What's actually moving toward bid on DOT's own side. DOT's phase labels are messier than DDC's — most of its book sits in bracketed administrative states like “(Pre-Design),” “(Lump Sum),” “(Requirements Contract)” and “(Funding Agreement)” instead of the plain design-procurement-construction workflow. Read through it:
| Phase (DOT-managed) | Projects | Project budget |
|---|---|---|
| (Pre-Design) — the bridge backlog, largely unfunded for construction | 228 | $12.11 billion |
| (Funding Agreement) — in-house resurfacing and ramp crews | 6 | $6.59 billion |
| Design | 44 | $4.01 billion |
| (Lump Sum) — program lines: Brooklyn Bridge hazard mitigation, ramps, milling | 33 | $3.31 billion |
| (Design Build) — BQE Sands-to-Atlantic, ferry terminal floodproofing | 2 | $1.94 billion |
| Construction | 20 | $1.52 billion |
| Close-out | 10 | $1.45 billion |
| (Requirements Contract) — signals, APS, streetlight and pole replacement, bus-lane cameras | 123 | $1.39 billion |
| (Completed) | 24 | $1.09 billion |
| (Equipment) — LED relighting, red-light and speed cameras | 23 | $746 million |
| Construction Procurement | 5 | $307 million |
| Pre-Design (unbracketed, standard workflow) | 25 | $689 million |
| (Design) | 8 | $498 million |
| (Construction) | 7 | $100 million |
| On hold, cancelled, withdrawn, transferred, partner-managed, pending | 32 | $589 million |
Only five DOT-managed projects sat in formal construction procurement in May — $307 million: West Tremont Avenue bridge ($151 million), protective coating of the Macombs Dam Bridge ($63.7 million, phase end January 2029), component rehabilitation packages 22B ($42.5 million) and 22A ($34.4 million), and the ferry maintenance facility ramps ($15.4 million). West Tremont has since crossed the line: DOT's City Record award notice of July 13, 2026 registers $109,417,500 to John Civetta & Sons Inc. by competitive sealed bid for rehabilitation of the bridge over the Metro-North Hudson Line, the Major Deegan and the bus terminal. The Council's March report had carried the job at $120.7 million across FY2026–2030 with $75.7 million in FY2026 — a plan line that turned into a contract inside four months. That's the exception, not the rule.
Behind it, 15 DOT-managed projects with $728 million in budget are in design and scheduled to finish design between August 2026 and August 2027 — Manhattan 3 projects ($321 million), Brooklyn 4 ($172 million), Bronx 3 ($131 million), Queens 3 ($92 million), Staten Island 2 ($12 million). Now, design completion is not a bid date; DOT's own procurement step follows by months. But it's the best public signal you'll get of the 2027 bridge letting calendar.
The requirements-contract and equipment lines are the steadiest DOT-direct market and the hardest to spot on any letting list. DOT awarded all three borough-pair streetlight maintenance contracts this summer: $35,154,405 to E-J Electric Installation Co. (Queens and Brooklyn, July 27), $33,673,994 to Hylan Datacom & Electrical LLC (Manhattan and the Bronx, July 16), $12,845,777 to Miller Pipeline LLC (Staten Island, July 20), all by competitive sealed bid per DOT's City Record notices. A $7,250,000 marine when-and-where structural repair contract for the five boroughs went to Waterside Contracting Corp. on July 20 the same way. Those are what the dashboard's “(Requirements Contract)” rows turn into.
How DOT buys. Competitive sealed bid through PASSPort is the default for construction: bridge rehabilitation, component packages, marine repairs, streetlight maintenance, ferry facility work. DOT's doing-business page says all City procurements “including DOT's capital construction projects, are advertised on the City Record,” and every notice sends bidders to PASSPort by EPIN.
Design-build — one team, drawings and shovels both — is live at DOT on a scale DDC only recently matched: the BQE Sands Street-to-Atlantic Avenue rehabilitation ($1.91 billion project budget; the Council report carries about $1.0 billion of commitments across FY2026–2030 and $1.5 billion in the ten-year plan), the Belt Parkway bridges over Bedford, Ocean, Nostrand and Sheepshead Bay Road ($72 million to $101 million each, all labeled “Design Build” and in design), and ferry terminal floodproofing ($33 million). DOT renewed its master agreement with Henningson Durham & Richardson for owner's representative services “to manage various design build projects” at $22,686,094 on June 30. If you're a trade contractor, a design-build bridge is a subcontracting market — you get in through the shortlisted team, not through PASSPort.
Prequalified lists gate the consulting side: DOT keeps PQLs in small, medium and large tiers for bridge design and construction-support services and for bridge resident engineering inspection, reviewed quarterly through PASSPort. The REI solicitation for the nine-bridge component rehabilitation (EPIN 84126P0018, due Aug. 26) and the East River Bridges capital-program development study (EPIN 84126P0011, due Sept. 11) are that lane.
Intergovernmental purchase and renewals cover more than you'd think. Caddell Drydock & Repair's large-passenger-ferry drydocking contract renewed at $19,510,500 on May 14. And the $4,930,986 elevator, escalator and miscellaneous lift-equipment maintenance award to Slade Industries Inc. on Aug. 19 was made by intergovernmental purchase — piggybacking another government's contract, not a DOT bid. That one's an agency services contract; the notice names no facility.
Which trades are sitting best? Straight up: this is our read of the category and award data above, not a DOT ranking.
Bridge contractors — steel, concrete substructure, deck, movable-bridge mechanical — have the deepest market any city agency offers: $21.1 billion of active budget, a $12 billion pre-design backlog that converts to lettings over a decade, and a steady component-rehabilitation series (21A, 21B, 22A, 22B, 23A, the eight-bridge Bronx package open now) in the $35 million to $80 million band for shops that aren't sized for a $500 million East River job.
Bridge painters and coatings firms have their own $663 million line: Williamsburg Bridge painting ($430 million, pre-design) and the Macombs Dam protective coating ($63.7 million, in procurement) lead it.
Electrical contractors own the streetlight, signal and camera programs — $1.38 billion in signals, $404 million in lampposts, the $331 million LED replacement, $380 million in accessible pedestrian signals, and three borough-pair maintenance contracts just awarded at $12.8 million to $35.2 million.
Paving, concrete and streetscape firms should watch DDC, not DOT: the Vision Zero corridor packages ($2.50 billion across 79 projects), ramp requirements contracts by borough pair, prior-notice sidewalks and curb reconstruction by borough, and trench restoration. Recent DDC openings in this lane drew five to six bidders. Resurfacing itself is DOT's own crews; the outside market there is milling and the plant.
Marine and heavy-civil contractors have the ferry side: 41 terminal projects ($603 million), the maintenance-facility piers and ramps, the St. George ferry rack and waterfront remediation, heavy-weather mooring ($22.8 million, design to 2028), and the when-and-where marine repair contract.
Industrial and process contractors have one job unlike anything else in the city: the Harper Street asphalt plant, a $137.7 million plant rebuild procured through DDC with a phase end of March 2027.
Engineering, inspection and fabrication-inspection firms — especially City-certified M/WBEs — have the consulting lane: three $10 million transportation planning and engineering agreements awarded in July (T.Y. Lin, WSP, HNTB), the $13.5 million 21st Avenue bridge design award to HNTB, and structural-steel fabrication inspection solicitations that closed in June.
Bottom line. DOT's $36 billion is mostly bridges that are years from a bid, and paving the agency does with its own crews. The bid market inside that number is the bridge-component series, the painting line, the streetlight and signal requirements contracts and the ferry facilities. The street-level work most contractors think of as “DOT” — corridors, ramps, sidewalks, plazas — is an $8.4 billion program that bids through DDC under DDC's EPINs.
So read the dashboard to size the market. Read OMB's commitment target to gauge how much of it actually reaches a contract this year. And search PASSPort under both 841 and 850 to find the job — because a contractor standing at one door is only ever going to see half of what's behind it. The registration steps, the M/WBE doors and the live DOT watch list as of Aug. 22 run alongside this piece.