- [Narrator] We use roads every day, but many of us never consider how they are maintained or how construction is funded.

In recent years, state and federal agencies have been working to address concerns regarding our aging infrastructure.

In the 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, released by the American Society of Civil Engineers, US roads were given a D grade, due to congestion issues and the need for rehabilitation of the existing roads and bridges.

In an effort to fix Ohio's aging infrastructure, Ohio's newly elected governor, Mike DeWine, assembled an advisory committee to devise a solution to Ohio's crumbling roads.

- The big item was the funding because of shortfall in the highway improvement funds that comes from gasoline tax.

Our recommendation was that an increase was almost mandatory.

- [Narrator] To understand why we would need to raise a gas tax, it is important to know a little bit about the history of gas taxes.

The Revenue Act of 1932, which included the first gas tax, was enacted during the Hoover administration.

The gas tax was initially intended to generate funds and relieve the deficit during the Great Depression.

The gas tax was originally one cent a gallon and was increased later on.

In the years following the Great Depression, the gas tax was repurposed as the need for an interstate highway system became apparent.

In 1956, President Eisenhower signed into law the Federal Aid Highway Act, and a new highway trust fund was created to begin construction on a modern interstate system.

- It was a big plan.

It was very aggressive to create this large infrastructure that spanned multiple states, that connected multiple states, and the planning and the funding and everything else had to line up, and you started to see a lot of these interstates start to expand and really help grow the economy.

- [Narrator] Throughout the years, the state and federal gas taxes have been one of the primary methods of raising funds to keep up with rising construction costs and inflation.

Until 2019, the last state gas tax increase in Ohio occurred in 2003 as part of Governor Bob Taft's 2003 Jobs and Progress Plan.

This plan increased the gas tax by six cents a gallon.

Back then, the buying power of the dollar was worth significantly less than it is today, due to inflation eroding the buying power of the dollar.

- We have a new governor in the state of Ohio.

Governor DeWine started in January, and right out of the bat, his first major initiative was a transportation budget.

He came out aggressively with a gas user fee increase and that goes directly to our roads and bridges in the state of Ohio.

With that transportation bill, it ended up getting a 10.5 cent increase in gas user fee, and it's gonna help a lot of projects throughout all of Ohio.

- [Narrator] Despite DeWine's best efforts, due to inflation, future gas tax increases may be necessary to keep up with increasing construction costs.

Without proper funding, the infrastructure in Ohio might continue to suffer.

- From our perspective, you do the best you can.

We try to do a major rehabilitation of a road, typically it's best to do it every 15 to 20 years.

If you don't have the money and everything's getting eat up by construction inflation, what you're trying to do is you take a look at something where you may do a major rehabilitation, and you try to do a cheaper method that essentially extends your life.

So you basically trying to make things go longer and trying to stretch the dollar further.

There comes some point in time that just doesn't work anymore and basically the whole road prop file starts to fail.

- That's been happening in the state of Ohio and has been happening at the federal level as well, is gasoline tax has not kept up, has not been indexed to inflation and has not kept up with the expenses of maintaining roads.

I think everything economist would say that if we agree that we want this amount of gasoline tax to go to fund roads, then index it to inflation.

If you don't, then in real dollars essentially the amount that's going towards roads is decreasing every year.

- [Narrator] Although indexing the gas tax may make sense today to fund road construction, it may not be a viable option in the future due to innovation and an increase in popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Our reliance on petroleum to power vehicles may begin to decline.

- Hybrids, electric vehicles, obviously they're gonna penetrate the market more and more as years progress, so that's something that actually this transportation budget took into account.

By the time it went through the General Assembly, it includes a $200 registration fee on electric and $100 registration fee on hybrid vehicles.

So that kinda gets out ahead of the curve.

It doesn't really equate to a whole lot of money now, but as the penetration continues to grow in the market with electric vehicles and hybrids, that's gonna make a bigger difference and hopefully help adjust and account for the loss in revenue from the gas user fee.

- [Narrator] Ohio's new gas tax is a short term solution.

With construction inflation and new technology.

We must continue to look for alternative sources of funding to maintain and expand our infrastructure.

(upbeat futuristic music)