The North Carolina Department of Transportation records maintenance activities performed in house, but does not have an efficient way of forecasting future costs. The problem with not having an efficient way to forecast future highway maintenance costs is the inability to budget and plan for the changing cost over time. Due to this a cost index specific to highway maintenance was developed. Currently there are no other types of indices that relate to highway maintenance. Although there are indices available that relate to construction, they are not sufficient enough to be used for highway maintenance. The development of the highway maintenance cost index allows the NCDOT to be able to budget for future highway maintenance costs. The MCI values were calculated using a Laspeyres index formula. The Laspeyres index uses a set basket of goods from the base year, in order to estimate and track the change in money spent each year depending on the current year cost. With the given data a MCI tool was created in the form of an excel spreadsheet. Four sub-category indexes were developed including bridge, maintenance, traffic, and roadside maintenance. Using these four sub-category indexes one overall maintenance cost index (MCI) was created. Available data provided by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), from 2012 to 2015 was used in order to determine the base year variables for the index formula. The NCDOT will be able to use the provided MCI tool to better track, budget, and plan for future in house maintenance costs.