CLEVELAND — Come Monday, Ohio’s gas tax rate will be increased for the first time in 15 years. Approved by lawmakers in early April, the 10.5 cent-per-gallon hike on gasoline will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will be pumped toward road and bridge projects across the state.
When the gas tax increase goes into effect, Ohio’s overall gas tax rate will be 38.5 cents per gallon. In addition to a hike on gasoline, a 19 cent-per-gallon tax increase will also be applied to diesel fuel.
For a driver whose vehicle averages 24 miles-per-gallon, they can expect to pay an additional $50 per year for every 12,000 miles. Overall, between state and federal gasoline taxes, a driver whose vehicle consumes 500 gallons per year pays $230 in gasoline taxes.
Earlier this year, state transportation officials began to publicly sound the alarm on available funding for future road projects and the maintenance of existing roads. For years, the state had leveraged future toll road revenues to borrow money for road projects. However, the state had no more borrowing capacity, ODOT director Jack Marchbanks said.
“We were going to have to postpone maintenance,” Marchbanks said. “There would have been no new money for projects in the state of Ohio, which was not really a good place for us to be as a logistics state and the crossroads for the eastern half of the United States.”
With less money to go around, as many as 20 major road projects across the state would have been put on hold, state officials said. By halting these projects and having less money to spend on maintenance, Marchbanks told lawmakers that driver safety could be put in peril.
State officials originally proposed an 18-cent-per-gallon increase on gasoline. However, after debate and negotiations by the Ohio House and Senate, lawmakers agreed on the 10.5-cent-per-gallon increase. The state’s current gas tax rate, which was the lowest amongst all Great Lakes states by a wide margin, is 28-cents-per-gallon.
Amounting to close to $1 billion, the increase in gas tax revenues will go toward the construction of new roads and highways, in addition to the maintenance of existing roads. However, much like a pothole in Northeast Ohio, the change in the price at the pump may be jarring to some drivers.
“We’re already going through a bunch of stuff as it is, why raise the gas prices?” David Barnes said. “People got to get to work, get back and forth to work, and you’re going to raise more money? We can barely afford what we’re paying right now just with what we pay in gas as it is. I don’t like it. I’m pretty sure other people aren’t going to like it.”
Jim Garrity, a spokesperson for AAA, said gas tax increases usually don’t have a big impact on summer travel. Instead, drivers will have to budget elsewhere.
“With the record amount of travel that AAA is predicting, we aren’t seeing it having an adverse effect when you’re talking a matter of 10 cents. It would be really have to be a large increase, a huge increase, for people to say, ‘I’m not going on that trip,’” Garrity said. “When you have these increases in gas prices, if that’s say, $20, $30, $40 extra in the tank or for the whole trip, they’ll find other ways to budget to make that work.”
The increase in gas tax revenues will also provide an additional windfall for local communities. The new money will be split 55/45 with local communities getting the larger share. That is expected to generate more than $350 million in new revenue.
“Now that we have this additional revenue, those projects have been brought back on schedule,” Marchbanks said. “You will be seeing a lot of paving projects not only in our interstates and US highways but also our local roads across the Greater Cleveland area.”
Garrity said there are easy things drivers can do to mitigate the additional costs of gasoline.
“You can lay off of the jack rabbit starts when you’re getting rolling. Use air conditioning on the highways, but roll windows down in the city,” Garrity said. “make sure there’s air in the tire. A properly inflated tire can go a long way toward saving you some money at the pump.”
