Did A Giant Pothole Swallow Your Car? Blame Congress.

Appetite for a federal gas tax increase is all but nonexistent in both parties.

“While there are some individual members who support a gas tax, the vast majority of both parties do not,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“I want to make very clear I’m against raising the gas tax,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said last month. His reasoning: With more fuel-efficient cars on the road, drivers get more miles to the gallon and buy less gas. “And we can’t just chase fuel efficiency with higher taxes,” Ryan said. 

While Congress has shown little interest in hiking the gas tax, a number of groups that have historically opposed the idea are now supporting an increase, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Associations. 

Amid the ongoing political struggle in Washington over the Highway Trust Fund, states with deep infrastructure problems have taken the matter into their own hands. The 16 to have increased their gas tax in the last two years include these eight red states: Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

“They are finding the political will, and it’s difficult. It is not easy, especially in states like Wyoming,” said Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “All of them had to come to this in a difficult way because nobody likes to pay more, but they realized that there is a price for doing nothing and that is the price that we continue to pay because Congress cannot find the political will to support transportation.”

Georgia’s recent 6.7 cents-per-gallon increase to the gas tax (and 7.7 cents-per-gallon increase for diesel) wasn’t just a one-time hike, Davis of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy explained. As inflation and fuel efficiency eat away at incoming transportation funds, Georgia addressed the issue “head on” by indexing its gas tax to inflation.

“It’s going to put gas tax revenues on a more sustainable course so we are not talking about just a one-time infusion of money, but a serious reform to the gas tax that’s going to make a huge difference in infrastructure funding for years and decades,” Davis said. 

Davis stressed that the federal gas tax has fallen short not only because there are more electric cars and fuel hybrids on the road, but primarily because the tax rate is not indexed to inflation.

John Schroer, Tennessee’s transportation commissioner, wouldn’t say if his state is considering raising the gas tax, but lamented that short-term extensions of the Highway Trust Fund have forced him to halt projects valued in the millions.

“In the state of Tennessee, we pushed back $400 million worth of projects until after we get some sort of message that there has been an extension long enough for us to fund some of these projects,” he said.

Schroer explained that 60 percent of Tennessee’s spending on transportation infrastructure comes from the federal highway fund, and without a long-term fix, Tennessee is quickly moving into “maintenance only.”

“It really is a national crisis,” Schroer said. “Without [federal funding], we are going to be in a lot of difficulty in even maintaining what we have. And when you don’t maintain, you have safety issues, issues that are serious.”

Arkansas is in a similar situation, shelving 70 projects worth $282 million due to the uncertainty surrounding the next highway fund extension. It's floating an increase to its gas tax right now.

“There’s a lot to fix,” said Danny Straessle, spokesman for the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. “Right now, money is short for everybody.”

Arkansas also stopped its $50 million overlay program, which fixes the potholes that develop during the rough winter months. The state was hit with back-to-back storms in February, but the department doesn’t know when it will be able to send out road crews to patch up the damage left behind.

“A lot of that damage is not going to be repaired because we’ve had to cancel the overlay program,” Straessle said. “And if you think about how that impacts the drivers: They hit the potholes, they’re ruining their alignment, they’re popping their tires, they’re having wrecks.”

Tony Harris, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Transportation, said there has been “some discussion” about raising the gas tax in his state. “We are watching what other states are doing,” he said.

“We’ve seen our construction costs increase by about two-and-a-half times since 1991,” noted Harris. “Yet our state and federal funding have remained at the same level.” 

For Alabama, the funding stagnation has meant a slowing down of construction planning and a greater focus on basic preservation like street resurfacing, instead of new construction and expanding road capacity. And they still can’t keep up. Harris said they have accrued a five-year backlog on road resurfacing. Three thousand miles of state road (out of a total of 11,000) are waiting to be resurfaced.

“Every state is in the same boat,” Harris said. “What we are seeing here is not unique.”

In Mississippi, Melinda McGrath, executive director for the state Department of Transportation, said some cities are postponing projects. She added that the state can’t keep pace with its paving and bridge work needs. Delta farmers have had to map out alternative routes to haul their crops around bridges that can no longer handle their loads. The new routes are sending them down country roads on miles-long detours.

Jerry Slocum, a farmer and grain elevator operator based in Batesville, Mississippi, said truckers are hauling less cargo and making fewer trips per day because the country roads can’t handle too much weight and the new routes take longer. That's raised costs, he said.

“They need to get the bridges fixed,” said Slocum. “It’s not something you do in a year. It’s a process of three, four, five years. Unless they fix all of those low-weight bridges, it’s still a bottleneck.”