The Des Moines Register: Road Construction Running out of Gas?
media mentionBy Editorial Board, May 25, 2014
Iowans on the road this Memorial Day weekend will likely encounter some traffic delays. It’s that time of the year when work gets underway on the state’s highways and bridges.
The Iowa Department of Transportation is already looking down the road to $2.7 billion in major highway construction projects beginning in 2015, including interstate improvements in Council Bluffs and Sioux City and a new bridge over the Mississippi River at Bettendorf. But beyond these projects, the DOT says it cannot predict what road improvements Iowans will see in the future.
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Indeed, Iowa has the distinction of having gone longer than all but three other states in raising its gas tax, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan tax and policy research group. It has been more than 25 years since Iowa raised its gas tax, and this state has the distinction of being one of 10 states whose gas tax rates are at an all-time low when adjusted for inflation, according to the institute’s analysis.
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