Nearly every state has raised fuel taxes in the last decade under the premise of fixing the deteriorated infrastructure.
It never gets fixed.
The monies are spent on mass transportation in the urban (Democrat controlled) areas, green projects, etc.
Infrastructure contracts are multiples higher than necessary due to regulatory compliance and graft....plus the protection of union jobs. (Many states mandate private contractors pay union wage rates if they win state contracts).
But even more waste is achieved through “studies”.
How many times have you read about a “study” being conducted of how to repair/replace a piece of infrastructure? The millions spent on something that should take about 5 seconds to decide. Those are the contracts given to political friends/family.
Here in Pennsylvania, we have the second highest fuel taxes, some of the worst infrastructure in the nation and we do decades of “studies” on the same piece of infrastructure only to do nothing about it.
There is a bypass being being in central Pennsylvania that has been in the works for over 40 years. Multiple studies, analysis, etc. As they began work, they discovered it goes across an old deep slag pit where ash was deposited from a power plant....so there is no way to reach bedrock and any road would sink into it. All those studies and they did not know this until after they started the project. Meanwhile, everyone knew this pit was there. The power company that created it is still in business and owns the land. Nobody asked the power company what it was used for.
Will heads roll? Nope. They will spend more on additional “studies” to re-route the bypass, extending the project from a 5 year to 10 year.
Would this be the U.S. 15 bypass that’s being built in Pennsylvania?