As I said before, if you choose to have a gas tax then you need to increase it to keep up with inflation. Other taxes based on percentages like sales, income and property keep pace with inflation. Because of wild fluctuations in gas prices they go with a fixed amount instead of a percentage to keep revenue steady.

The problem is that they don't have something written into the code that says that it grows with inflation. Since increasing it is always unpopular they avoid raising it. When they do they make a big jump so they don't have to do it again for a while. We used to hear the same gripe about raising the price of stamps and even pay phones back in the day.

Why didn't you put D-WI? I actually thought the people of Wisconsin elected a donkey. ;-)

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

Here is a unconventional thought:

It seems that gridlock follows construction.....
If you build it, they will come.
(Especially in CA).

Or to phrase it another way:
Californians (and other Suburbanites) will spend a fixed percentage of their time commuting.
Improve the roads- and people will simply chose to commute further.
Gridlock and decay remain constant.
Yet as the highways systems constantly expands, it require ever more spending.

At 25mpg, for 10,000m/year, that $.12 comes to a whopping $48/year. Yeah, obscenely expensive.
Average driver in CA drove 13,636 miles in 2014. http://alankandel.scienceblog.com/...he-national-average/

ADD $17.28/year

Average car burns 0.8 gals/hour while idling. http://cinemacarsound.com/...ing-at-the-drive-in/
CA drivers spend at least 90 hours/year in traffic delays. https://www.nerdwallet.com/...-insurance-gas-time/

ADD $8.64/year

That does not take into account the time where the drivers are not stationary, but damn close.

ADD ~$2.50/year

It may be a bit snarky, but it's also called "perspective". A pothole cost me hundreds of dollars last year.

Let's think about the cost of the time spent driving:
Median income in CA: $61,000 annual
Hourly: $29/hr
Assume: 45 mph and 30 mpg

Cost of time spent driving expressed in ($/gallon) = $29/1.5
=$19.6 $/gallon of lost wages to drive around.

My question is thus:
How is a 7c/gallon change going to affect people's driving habits?
(When people are already spending $19.6/gallon in wasted time).

Want people to drive less!
Maybe it is best to let the infrastructure decay?

In CA, taxes on gas equal approximately $.77/gallon (including the latest increase). I'm not sure if this includes city/county taxes so could be higher but let's make this really simple.

If you fill you gas tank once per week (very optimistic if you live in SoCal) and you gave a 20g gas tank, you're paying $15.40 per week in gas taxes. That's $739/yr. If you are a small business which requires driving OR you are commuting farther to/from work, OR you have multiple drivers in your household (we have 4) it will easily be 4 or 5 times that amount. For my household this equates to around $3,000/yr.

Go electric? Sure, buy new cars then CA will be implementing a VMT (vehicle miles traveled) tax so it's irrelevant re taxes paid - this VMT program is in pilot at this point in time.

And, atleast in CA, there is no evidence the government is capable of using the gas tax funds for roadway infrastructure - the past gas taxes were implemented on this basis and the funds were not used for roads hence the latest $.12 increase.

The gross mismanagement and bloated bureaucracy in CA is the real issue, along with the massive social programs in play right now which include taxpayer funds to provide legal services to illegals, single payer healthcare, sanctuary state status (losing fed funds), and list goes on and on. One can reasonably argue about another $.12/g gas tax, or any minor topic in isolation, but each builds upon the last and is extraordinarily frustrating.

It isn't an either or type of thing. If you could get your spending in order, you wouldn't need ANOTHER $0.12/gal tax ON TOP OF the amount you are already insanely taxed.

You Californians are the proverbial frog in the pot on the stove where the heat is slowly turned up, just a little bit at a time. It's incredible, really, but your response evinces why you keep electing Donkeys who keep turning up the heat just a little bit ...

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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That means your family is driving over 100K miles/year!! Wow, the depreciation on your car fleet is higher than most folks' take home pay.

If you don't want to buy electric, lease one. Deals are astonishingly low. Don't curse the dark, turn on a light switch.

Look, you sound profoundly unhappy to live in CA. If it is also a terrible financial burden, what keeps you here? Kansas is absolutely wonderful, I hear. The tax rate has plummeted in the past few years. For most folks who live in CA, the positives outweigh the negatives (at least until retirement rolls around...).

My contention is that California is a victim of it's own success.

The system of roads in California seems to be an example of too much success. It is one of the largest public works projects of all times and all places.

The CA roads carry huge numbers of people, huge distances.
That is what they were made too do.

The downside to this is that the public responds to this success by putting even more cars on the roads.

Which in turn requires even more infrastructure.

Too much money, too many people, too many cars! More money, more people, more cars, more infrastructure!

It does seem that this will collapse under its own weight eventually.

Seems like the public needs someone to blame.
"Government malfeasance", "evil corporations" are more convenient scapegoats than "collective short term decision making."

Maybe not an outrage, but it is extreme unless that is part of a job. I have two drivers and we total less than 10k miles per year. My sister's is similar in number of miles driven. Usually additional drivers would be less annual mileage as they are students just driving to school or a local job.

Possible, but by no means guaranteed, and not due to relatively small increases like this gas tax. As one person pointed out, the more universal increase is car registration. As more electric cars appear and average mileage improves, gas taxes will be less useful for generating revenue. Nobody is leaving due to the extra couple of hundred dollars/year from this. Rich folks are making too much, and have figured out ways to reduce the tax burden.

Ha! Gas taxes are hardly running a surplus...quite the opposite. Federal and other state funds highly subsidize the costs of transportation/driving. If road taxes were totally revenue neutral and accounted for all costs you would be paying like $10/gal in tax. Think of it as a reduction of the subsidy.

12 cents per is nothing. The real fun is when a refinery in Wilmington has a mysterious "fire" or mechanical issue that results in a 30 to 40 cent spike for months. Or when the refinery needs to switch to the "summer blend" resulting in another spike.

It's all BS.

Makes no difference to me tho. I'll pay the $100 electric car surcharge and increased registration fees. Whatev.

At least I could drive my vet year round, if I had one. ;)

p.s. in all seriousness, gas stations are so passe. That's twentieth century technology.