State transportation experts testify that bridges are not crumbling and Iowa has excess roads
But now that Iowa’s problems that never were are funded, you can expect that the same suspects will push for a federal gas tax increase as well
Gas Tax Revisited
Last Tuesday, March 1, 2016, marked the one year anniversary of Iowa’s Road Use Tax Fund, or gas tax, being increased by $0.10 per gallon. Erin Murphy, Des Moines Bureau Chief for Lee Enterprises, wrote a newspaper article that noted the anniversary and presented comments from government officials, lobbyists, and Iowans for Tax Relief. This article was published in newspapers across the state, including the Quad City Times. Below is the full text of the comments Iowans for Tax Relief made to Mr. Murphy.
The special interest groups that pushed the gas tax increase sold it to the public as a necessity for funding to fix crumbling bridges and repair deteriorating roads with the scare tactic that we wouldn’t be able to keep our children safe on their school buses or get our grain to market, if a gas tax didn’t pass. Before the gas tax was increased, the public and our Legislators were told by proponents of the tax hike about Iowa’s over 5,000 structurally deficient bridges and how important it was to fix them immediately. After the gas tax passed however, Scott Neubauer, bridge maintenance and inspection engineer with the Iowa Department of Transportation finally shared the truth in a Radio Iowa interview given this February: “Ninety-percent of those deficient bridges have less than 500 vehicles a day traveling on them and 65 percent of them have less than 50 vehicles a day. So, they’re structures that are basically serving the needs that they have… it in no way implies that there’s any serious issue going on with the bridge necessarily that needs immediate attention.”
And despite the stated need to increase the gas tax to fix our state’s “crumbling” infrastructure, Iowa DOT Director Paul Trombino indicated last summer, after the gas tax increase had passed, speaking at an Urban Land Institute event, that Iowa essentially has more miles of roads than it needs and we should not bother trying to repair all of them. As reported by strongtowns.org, “I said the numbers before. 114,000 lane miles, 25,000 bridges, 4,000 miles of rail…It’s not affordable. Nobody’s going to pay. ..We’re not going to pay to rebuild that entire system…And my personal belief is that the entire system is unneeded. And so the reality is, the system is going to shrink…There’s nothing I have to do. Bridges close themselves. Roads deteriorate and go away. That’s what happens.”
After the extreme measures taken by former Speaker Paulsen to get this legislation passed we now learn that the state believes those bridges actually aren’t in such a dire strait of disrepair and that some of those crumbling roads will never be fixed because they have been deemed unnecessary. Instead the state is using all the new tax proceeds to continue highway expansion projects, focusing its time and money on expanding Highway 61 to four lanes in southeast Iowa and Highway 20 to four lanes in northwest Iowa. While having a state blanketed in four-lane highways is a nice luxury to have, should we have obtained it by passing a disingenuous tax increase on Iowans or just changed the gas tax formula to allow the money to go where it is most needed?
