May 7, 2017 4 min read

It’s painfully obvious to anyone driving on Pennsylvania’s roads and highways that infrastructure improvements are badly needed.

The state began to address its crumbling infrastructure – specifically its long list of structurally deficient bridges – upon passing Act 89 in 2013. It effectively raised the gasoline fuel tax and increased several motor vehicle fees.

Although the 58.3 cents per gallon gas tax is hitting drivers hard in the wallet, it’s also raised billions in revenue. The result has been orange cones popping up across the state for much-needed construction projects.

Now the federal government is getting on board as President Trump has called for a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill. Trump had promised such a bill in the first 100 days of his presidency, although the realities of governing got in the way.

He and the Republican-controlled Congress diverted their priorities to a health care bill, which the House passed last week, and it will continue to face a stiff fight as the American Health Care Act moves to the Senate. Tax reform is also on the horizon, meaning any infrastructure spending bill could be collateral damage in the partisan fights to come.

That being the case, any infrastructure bill would be seen as a success, according to California University of Pennsylvania’s Government Agency Coordination Office, which has helped small businesses in Southwestern Pennsylvania as they work to become registered to do business with all levels of government.

“The government is always going to be a buyer,” said Deborah Wojcik, the director of the GACO program.

“It’s a huge market. The government buys everything to support its operations.”

In rural areas, infrastructure spending could help extend water pipelines to homes using wells or improve broadband internet service that is slow and unreliable, especially in Greene County. In suburban settings, aging sewage pipelines built a quarter-century ago could be replaced. In the cities, new bus lines and other public transit options could be constructed to alleviate the stress placed on crowded highways.

But all of those infrastructure improvements are still just one-time fixes.

Even if it is passed by Congress, a spending bill alone won’t solve the long-term crisis facing the country’s aging infrastructure, whether it be roads, bridges, utilities or railroad trestles.

No one wants to pay higher taxes or fees, but you get what you pay for. And American drivers have been getting exactly what they’ve been paying for (not much) since the last time the federal gasoline tax was increased in 1993.

The federal gasoline tax has remained at 18.4 cents for 25 years. That amount hasn’t kept up with the pace of inflation or the price of a gallon of gas, which has more than doubled during that span. The current federal gas tax is not sustainable, and that’s illustrated not only by the quality of our highways, but the lack of big, new transportation projects.

Converting the tax to a percentage tied to the cost of a barrel of oil could be a way to improve funding for projects. But that would also be an unpredictable cost structure with the volatile price of oil.

In the end, the only way to find a suitable revenue source is to raise the federal gasoline tax, even by just a couple of pennies.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States government went on a spending binge that gave us the national interstate system and other infrastructure improvements we still enjoy today. They won’t last forever, however, and the current trajectory puts them in jeopardy.

A long-term funding source, in addition to a major spending bill, is needed to save America’s infrastructure that we can hand off to the generations that will follow us in the years ahead.