I read somewhere that a politician complained “we have so many more cars on the road we need to increase the gas tax”
Question: If there are so many more cars on the road aren’t they already collecting a lot more tax money? Extra cars means more gallons of gas used that is taxed.
Well, the claim is that because newer cars get better gas mileage, that they are actually losing revenue. Of course, that doesn't take into account the fact that most (by far) vehicles sold today are trucks and SUVs. Also, the wear and tear you get on roads from autos is negligible. It's the big rigs that cause most of the wear, and they already pay a heck of a lot to support the infrastructure.
The biggest problem that I've seen is that when a dollar's worth of "infrastructure" money comes into most states, about 20¢ gets spent on actual infrastructure (if you're lucky).