Congress urged to pass increasing fuel tax

[Ray,IN]

Federal panel urging fuel tax increase
To me this is insulting. We are admonished to drive less to conserve natural resources, congress acknowledges we have; now we will be forced to pay up to 40 cents/gallon fuel tax by 2013.
I think it's time to begin writing my elected Representatives and expressing (subdued of course)my opinions.Find your representative

[Ray,IN]

Federal panel urging fuel tax increase
To me this is insulting. We are admonished to drive less to conserve natural resources, congress acknowledges we have; now we will be forced to pay up to 40 cents/gallon fuel tax by 2013.
I think it's time to begin writing my elected Representatives and expressing (subdued of course)my opinions.Find your representative

[Bob (WA0MQE)]

I for one find it ludicrous Congress is even considering such a thing. I definitely wrote to my Representatives.

As many of us who travel our interstates and highways, it's pretty obvious who and what is causing most of the damage to our roads. If they'd get cross country hauling back on rail where it belongs and decrease truck traffic, and lower heavy truck speed limits like California does, think how long a given highway would last once it's built or resurfaced.

There's a highway that parallels Interstate 25 between Colorado Springs and Denver in Colorado. It was a really good smooth blacktop highway for awhile until trucks started using it to circumvent the Weigh Stations on Interstate 25. The state would re-surface it and in no time it would be worn out again. Finally the DOT started monitoring traffic on it and because of their findings the State Patrol and local Sheriff's Dept's starting patrolling it more and were nailing these guys left and right. Since then a re-surfacing job lasts years longer, even with a lot of RV's and other heavy types of vehicles that tend to use this highway.

I know this is controversal, but WHY NOT make all interstates toll roads. Charge by vehicle type/weight, etc. There are a lot of folks out there that never drive on interstates, think about the granny's and granpa's that only drive in their neighborhood, so why should they pay tax for this? It wouldn't effect me that much, because all though I do travel quite abit I don't like to use interstates because the trucks have beat them to death. Traveling on some of the back roads proves that the lack of heavy and high speed truck traffic makes a big difference on how long a road lasts.

[Route 66]

This is being discussed HERE.