Iowa gas-tax hike increases local road, bridge projects

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Updated Nov 20, 2017

Iowa Welcome Sign 2008Iowa’s 10-cent gas-tax increase, enacted in March 2015, has brought in an additional $515 million for road and bridge projects, the Quad City Times reports.

The additional revenue has been coming to cities and counties and must be used for critical road and bridge projects. The state has also used about half of the money for primary road improvement projects.

Equipment World’s 2017 Bridge Inventory showed that Iowa ranked second in the country for having the highest percentage of bridges (19.8 percent) rated as poor. Rhode Island held the top spot at 26.6 percent bridges deemed poor.

The report indicated that most of Iowa’s bridge problems were in its local systems, with 25 percent deemed to be structurally deficient.