TxDOT Unit Prices in Texas: What Contractors Actually Bid in 2026

If you're bidding TxDOT work in Texas, you've already figured out that national cost books are nearly useless. RSMeans gives you a national average adjusted by a city factor — which is a polite way of saying it takes a number that's wrong everywhere and makes it slightly less wrong in your ZIP code.

The only number that matters is what other contractors are actually winning TxDOT work at. And TxDOT publishes exactly that: for every pay item in its catalog, the unit price the low bidder actually paid, statewide, over the trailing three years. We track all of it.

Where these prices come from

Every TxDOT contract is awarded at a public letting, and every awarded price becomes a public record. TxDOT compiles those records into a running figure: for each pay item, the average unit price the low bidder actually paid, across every district, over the last three years. Caliche indexes those records into one searchable database and tracks how each item moves by district and over time.

The result is a picture of what real Texas contractors are winning TxDOT work at — not what anyone thinks the work should cost. The more times an item has been let, the more reliable the number. That's why every row in the table below carries its observation count.

Common TxDOT items: what the market is paying

The table below is built directly from TxDOT statewide low-bid records. These are not estimates — each figure is the average unit price the low bidder actually paid for that item, with the number of lettings (n) behind it.

A few things to keep in mind when you read this table. These are statewide averages — the figure you see is the center of a wide field, not a target. A pay item that averages $118/LF statewide may be winning closer to $100 in a competitive metro district and well above that in a thin rural one. And the average rolls three years of lettings together, so a fast-moving material cost gets smoothed out. Treat the table as your starting orientation, not your bid.

That orientation becomes a bid when you put it against a real schedule. Upload the actual document the agency sent and Caliche prices every line — not one average, but the low, typical, and high the item is winning at, calibrated to the district and agency type:

The pay-item categories that drive a TxDOT bid

A TxDOT highway schedule looks sprawling, but the dollars concentrate in a handful of civil trades. Knowing which category carries the weight on a given job tells you where pricing accuracy actually moves your total — and where it's noise.

Earthwork & subgrade

Roadway excavation, embankment, and flexible base are the foundation of most corridor work — high-quantity items where a few cents per cubic yard, multiplied across the job, swings the total. Haul distance to the nearest pit or plant is the biggest single driver of how these price district to district.

Drainage & storm sewer

Reinforced concrete pipe (by diameter and class), inlets, manholes, and concrete riprap. RCP alone often carries a large share of a drainage-heavy schedule, and it's freight-sensitive — the unit price embeds the cost of getting heavy pipe to the site, which is why the same diameter prices differently across districts.

Paving & surfacing

Dense-graded hot-mix asphalt, surface treatments, and concrete pavement. HMA pricing tracks liquid-asphalt cost and plant proximity; on a large mainlane job the asphalt items can dominate the entire bid, so this is the category where a sharp number wins or loses the work.

Roadway structures & concrete

Concrete curb & gutter, sidewalk, curb ramps, and retaining structures. Lower-quantity but labor-intensive — pricing here reflects local crew rates more than material, which is part of why dense urban districts can run high even with deep bidder pools.

Traffic control & safety

Barricades, signs and traffic handling, guardrail and end treatments, and pavement markings. Often underestimated by newer bidders: on an urban job, time-based traffic-control items can quietly become a major line, and they're a frequent source of margin erosion when priced from a stale assumption instead of recent lettings.

Below is each district's typical level versus the statewide average. For the full item-by-item breakdown in your district — every major pay item, priced locally — open its page.

Texas is a big state, and the TxDOT Houston District is not the TxDOT Dallas District. Labor markets, material costs, contractor density, and haul distance all vary — but not along a tidy metro-versus-rural line. Across the pay items we track, the Houston District bids roughly 10% below the statewide average, while the Dallas District — every bit as much a major metro — runs about 14% above it. Same state, same agency, same pay-item catalog, opposite directions. The statewide number is a center of mass; your district sits somewhere around it, and assuming “big city means cheaper” will cost you either way.

Here's where each district typically lands relative to the statewide average — measured across every pay item with enough lettings in both the district and the state to compare honestly. Negative means the district usually bids under the statewide figure; positive means over.

A couple of these districts (Corpus Christi, Waco) rest on thinner samples than Houston or Dallas — the item count is shown so you can weight them accordingly. The pattern that holds across the largest samples is the one that matters: competition is real, but it isn't the only force. Dense urban work carries higher labor, congestion, and traffic-control costs that can more than offset a deep bidder pool — which is how Dallas, with no shortage of contractors, lands as the most expensive district in the state, while Houston lands as one of the least.

What drives district-level price differences

Contractor density — and it cuts both ways. A deep bidder pool adds competitive pressure: the Houston District, with dozens of qualified contractors on every drainage job, bids about 10% under the statewide average. But density doesn't guarantee lower prices. The Dallas metro has just as many bidders and runs 14% above — because urban labor, congestion, and traffic-control costs more than offset the competition. Thin rural districts have less competition but lower overhead, so they don't reliably bid higher either. There's no “metro discount” rule; there's only the data for the district you're actually bidding.

Material haul distance. Concrete pipe, structural steel, and HMAC all have freight costs embedded in the unit price. A project 60 miles from the nearest batch plant bids differently than one two miles away.

Project size and complexity. Large TxDOT highway corridor projects have enough volume to drive sharp pricing on linear items. Small standalone utility relocations — even on TxDOT right-of-way — often come in higher per unit because setup costs are amortized over fewer linear feet.

District is one axis. The type of agency letting the work is another — TxDOT, a municipal public works department, and a MUD will price the same scope very differently. We break that down in Houston Public Works vs. Harris County MUD pricing.

How TxDOT bidding actually works

The price data makes more sense once you know the machine that produces it. Four mechanics shape every number in this guide.

Monthly statewide lettings

TxDOT lets construction contracts on a regular monthly schedule, statewide. Bids are opened in public, read against the agency's estimate, and the tabulation — every bidder's price on every line item — becomes public record. That published tab is the raw material behind every figure here.

The pay-item catalog

TxDOT doesn't price free-text scopes — it prices standardized pay items, each carrying an Item number from its specifications (reinforced concrete pipe, for instance, falls under Item 464). A bid schedule is a list of those items with quantities; you fill in a unit price for each. Because the catalog is standardized, the same item can be tracked across thousands of lettings — which is exactly what makes a real, comparable average possible.

The engineer's estimate vs. the low bid

TxDOT prepares its own engineer's estimate for every project, but the contract is awarded to the lowest responsive, prequalified bidder — not to the estimate. The estimate is the agency's internal benchmark; the low bid is what actually clears the market, and it's the number Caliche tracks. Pricing to the estimate instead of to the real field is a common way to either leave money on the table or miss the award entirely.

Prequalification

To bid most TxDOT highway work, a contractor must be prequalified — TxDOT reviews financial capacity and experience and sets a bidding capacity. Practically, that means the field on any given letting is a known, qualified set, which is part of why district-level competition is as consistent as the data shows.

How to use this data when you're bidding TxDOT work

The most common mistake contractors make with an average is treating it as a target. TxDOT's published number tells you where the field has been — it doesn't tell you where you should be. Your cost structure, your backlog, your equipment availability, and how badly you want this particular job all decide whether you bid above or below it.

Positioning logic by situation

If you need the job (low backlog, equipment sitting idle, team needs the work): bid below the average on your most competitive items. Know which items carry the most spread — those are where sharpening your number has the most impact on total bid competitiveness.

If this is a strategic job (building relationships with a specific agency, establishing presence in a new district): bid near the average. You're not trying to be the lowest; you're trying to be in a competitive range without underselling your capabilities.

If you're capacity-constrained (busy, selective about what you take on): bid above the average. You'll lose more often, but the jobs you win carry the margin to justify it.

Certified contractors have one more layer to weigh — the goal-driven dynamics that change where the competitive line sits. We cover that in how MBE and DBE firms can price Texas civil bids competitively.

The published average is one number. The decision needs three — where the low bids cluster, where the typical bid lands, and where the high end sits. That full spread is what Caliche's bid pricing engine puts on every line item when you price an actual bid schedule, calibrated to the district and agency type the job is actually in.

How accurate is it — really?

Market data is only worth anything if it reflects what actually wins. So we tested it — not on one lucky job, but on 1,870 real Texas bids Caliche had never seen, each job's own prices stripped out of the data first so every estimate was made blind. Then we measured where its priced total landed against the field.

Across 1,870 jobs — not a single contrived demo — Caliche's median priced total came in ~1% over the winning bid in Houston, its deepest market, and ~3% statewide, while the typical bid in the field ran roughly ~11% over. Those are medians, not a per-job promise — results spread −17% to +32% vs the winner.

That's the whole value of pricing against real submitted bids: your number lands where the market actually clears, not where a cost book guesses. Caliche positions you; it doesn't predict the winner, because no one can — even the strongest Texas contractors win only a fraction of what they bid. For how that data is built and kept honest, see what's behind the numbers.

Getting access to TxDOT pricing for your items

The table above covers common items. Your actual bid schedule might have 60 line items, including specialty work, erosion control, traffic control, and items specific to TxDOT's pay item library. Caliche's database covers 80,000+ unique civil line items with real submitted market data — which means nearly everything that appears in a TxDOT bid schedule has a calibrated price waiting for it.

Upload your actual bid schedule (Excel or PDF) and Caliche returns the filled workbook with low / typical / high pricing on every line item, calibrated to the right district and agency type. The output is the same file the agency sent you, filled out and ready to review before you submit.