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The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) is the state agency responsible for planning, constructing, maintaining, and regulating Alabama’s transportation infrastructure across all modes of travel. The department, located in Montgomery, Montgomery County, relies on a combination of federal, state, and local funding to provide safe, efficient, and environmentally sound transportation throughout the state.

The agency oversees Alabama’s highways and bridges, public transit support, rail, ports, aviation coordination, and pedestrian and bicycle facilities. The department administers state and federal transportation funds and ensures compliance with federal performance, environmental regulations, and equity requirements, particularly those expanded under federal infrastructure legislation passed in 2021. ALDOT is led by a director appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Alabama Senate. This individual oversees the agency’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations. Organizationally, the department is divided into five geographic regions (North, West Central, East Central, Southwest, and Southeast) and a series of centralized bureaus and divisions responsible for engineering, maintenance, planning, environmental services, finance, and project delivery.

Good Roads Movement

ALDOT traces its origins to the Alabama State Highway Commission, which was established in 1911 during Gov. Emmet O’Neal’s administration. The commission initially consisted of five commissioners and was modestly housed in a cloakroom of the Senate Chamber in the Alabama Capitol Building in Montgomery. It included a geologist from the University of Alabama and an engineer from Auburn University among its staff. Funding for the new agency came from the Financial Act of 1911, which appropriated $154,000 from the State Convict Fund. The creation of the commission occurred amid the national Good Roads Movement, which arose in the latter 1890s during the Progressive Era and sought to modernize rural infrastructure and promote economic development through improved transportation networks.

In its early years, the commission functioned primarily as an advisory body. Rather than directly constructing roads, it focused on educating county governments about best practices for road building, emphasizing the use of local materials and cost-efficient engineering methods. Each county was eligible to receive $2,000 annually for road construction, contingent upon matching the state’s contribution within two years. Counties that failed to meet this requirement forfeited their allocation, which was then redistributed for other state purposes. In 1911, only nine counties—Blount, Bullock, Colbert, Dale, Etowah, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Macon, and Madison, —had successfully secured funding under this system.

When the agency was founded, road construction relied on gas steam rollers and rock crushers, and much of the labor was performed using teams of mules, typically 10 to 20 per project, reflecting the limited mechanization of early twentieth-century infrastructure work. Although Alabama had abolished the convict-lease system, a brutal form of forced labor, in 1928, the Highway Department had contracted with the state prison system in 1927 to use incarcerated labor to build and maintain roads. (Chain gangs largely disappeared in the 1960s after public outcry from civil rights and prison reform groups for inhuman treatment; however, Alabama reinstated the practice of using incarcerated labor for road construction in 1995.)

Federal involvement in highway development expanded significantly during this period. Sen. John Hollis Bankhead of Lamar County, a member of the Senate Committees on Public Buildings and Rivers and Harbors, played a key role in advocating for national highway funding. On July 11, 1916, Pres. Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Aid Road Act, which authorized $75 million in federal matching funds for road construction nationwide. Funds were distributed based on factors such as geographic area, population, and existing road mileage. In 1917, Alabama received $10,000 in federal aid; because no dedicated state highway funds existed at the time, counties were responsible for providing the required matching funds. Two years later, the commission reorganized to include ten commissioners and two ex officio members representing Auburn University and the University of Alabama, reflecting the growing professionalization of highway planning and engineering. The agency also relocated to the Bell Building in Montgomery, marking a step toward institutional expansion.

In 1922, Alabama voters ratified a $25 million bond issue to establish the state’s first coordinated highway system. During this period, surplus World War I military equipment was repurposed for road construction, and highways began to receive formal names. Among the most prominent was the Bankhead Highway, which became U.S. Route 78 in Alabama and eventually extended from Washington, D.C., through Jasper, Walker County, to San Diego, California, symbolizing the increasing integration of Alabama’s roads into a national network.

Despite early optimism, the state highway system soon faced significant challenges. The Great Depression sharply reduced available public funds and eroded support for the gasoline tax enacted in 1921. At the same time, the rapid growth of automobile ownership increased traffic volume, placing additional strain on roads that were often poorly constructed and inadequately maintained. Limited funding, primitive construction equipment, and frequent flooding left Alabama’s roadways in a precarious condition by the 1930s.

In 1927, the commission became the Alabama State Highway Department. Also that year, another bond issue was approved for building and maintaining roads, bridges, and culverts. In 1939, the commission underwent another major reorganization as part of a broader effort to modernize and centralize state government. Gov. Frank M. Dixon advocated consolidating independent agencies to improve administrative efficiency and reduce fragmentation. On March 2, 1939, the Alabama Legislature enacted the Alabama Merit System, which reorganized major departments, including Highway, Revenue, Finance, Corrections, Pardons and Paroles, and Personnel. As part of this restructuring, the Highway Department established new administrative and technical positions, including highway director, secretary to the director, construction engineer, auditor, equipment superintendent, and maintenance engineer. The department also expanded its operational divisions. The divisions are headquartered in Decatur, Morgan County; Birmingham, Jefferson County; Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County; Alexander City, Tallapoosa County; Grove Hill, Clarke County; and Montgomery, reflecting the growing scale and complexity of statewide road management.

World War II temporarily halted many state functions, including road construction and maintenance. Nearly 600 Highway Department employees were drafted into military service, and the federal government suspended highway aid in 1941. Nonetheless, maintaining reliable access to military installations remained a federal priority. In 1944, Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act to support national highways and secondary roads critical to defense and postwar planning, but funding was not actually appropriated until passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956.

The postwar economic boom renewed investment in Alabama’s transportation infrastructure. In 1951, the Alabama Legislature transferred responsibility for the construction, repair, and maintenance of all county roads and bridges from the counties to the Highway Department. Throughout the late 1950s, the department made significant improvements in road resurfacing, infrastructure project development, and bridge construction. It also introduced an engineering employee training program and implemented a two-way radio system to improve communications between field crews and base stations.

Cold War defense concerns further reshaped the nation’s and Alabama’s transportation landscape. In 1956, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, also known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, authorizing $25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways over ten years. It was the largest public works project in American history at the time. As the former supreme commander of the western allies in World War II, Eisenhower had been impressed with the efficiency of the German autobahn system. As president, he was worried that inadequate roads would hinder evacuations in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, which had recently tested its first hydrogen bomb. Funded through federal fuel taxes, the program provided a 90/10 federal-state matching formula. The proposed interstate routes in 1958 connected major urban areas in Alabama including Mobile, Montgomery, and Birmingham.

As urban mayors advocated for proposed highways to pass directly through cities to improve transportation efficiency and provide access to evacuation routes, state and local departments of transportation worked together to determine the placement of urban expressways. In the South, where cities remained rigidly segregated under Jim Crow, highway planners frequently routed these projects through low-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods. In Alabama, this practice intensified after Gov. John Patterson appointed Sam Engelhardt, a state senator and staunch segregationist, as director of the Alabama State Highway Department in 1959. Engelhardt supported routing Interstate 85 through a middle-class Black neighborhood in downtown Montgomery, a decision that preserved nearby White neighborhoods from disruption. The affected area, located near Alabama State College (present-day Alabama State University), was home to numerous civil rights activists, including Rev. Ralph Abernathy and George Curry. Construction began during Gov. George C. Wallace’s first term. Its completion dismantled the core of one of Montgomery’s most prominent Black middle-class communities, isolating businesses, disrupting school zones, and effectively fragmenting a significant Black voting bloc. Interstate 85 connects Georgia via Chambers County with Interstate 65 in Montgomery.

Alabama began construction on Interstate 65 in 1967, initially spanning 28 miles between Kimberly, Jefferson County, and Cullman, Cullman County. It would eventually connect with Tennessee via Limestone County, run through Montgomery, and link with Interstate 10 in Mobile. Interstate 10 in Alabama connects Florida via Baldwin County and Mississippi via Mobile County. Construction on Interstate 20 in Alabama began in the early 1960s and continued into the 1990s and connects Atlanta, via Cleburne County, and Birmingham. West of Birmingham, it runs concurrently with Interstate 59, which runs from Georgia via DeKalb County to Mississippi via Sumter County. Construction in Alabama began in 1960 and ended in 1980.

In 1969, the state approved a $47.5 million contract to construct the Mobile River Tunnel, later named the George C. Wallace Tunnel. The project took three and a half years to complete and opened to traffic on February 9, 1973, significantly improving travel between downtown Mobile and Baldwin County. In 1993, the Alabama State Highway Department was officially renamed the Alabama Department of Transportation, reflecting its expanded role within a multimodal transportation system. The Alabama Department of Aeronautics and its duties were subsumed under the ALDOT in 2000.

More recently, in 2019 Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Rebuild Alabama Act, dedicating a minimum of $10 million of the state gasoline tax to infrastructure improvements. In 2021, the largest federal investment in infrastructure since the Interstate Highway era of the 1960s was passed under Pres. Joe Biden. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized $550 billion in new spending for a total of $1.2 trillion to focus on interstate repair and modernization and multimodal transportation. With the additional federal funding, ALDOT has begun 79 new projects since 2021 including a $550 million project to replace the I-10 bridge over the Mobile channel. As of 2024, cities and counties across Alabama have received more than $40 million in state funding for transportation projects under the program.