By: Diane Benjamin
I’ve been out of town the last few days. We actually saw gas $.06 less – not in time to get a pic however.
Kentucky:
Kentucky gas tax is $.26 a gallon.
Illinois gas tax is $.454 a gallon.
This morning gasbuddy.com shows local prices exactly the difference in tax higher here.
Kentucky roads were good. Meanwhile the recreation of I74-I57 by Champaign has literally been under construction for years. It might be done by the end of next year: https://www.wcia.com/news/champaign-county/i-57-construction-completes-first-phase/
Just got back from a back roads trip through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida paid between $3.11 and $3.27 a gallon. The roads in Illinois are crap compared to most of the roads we were on.
I’m sure most of you remember the bureaucrats in Illinois voted to double the gas tax maybe 5 years ago. The new legislation stated the increase had to be spend on roads. I’m guessing what is happening now is the original gas tax money is being spent on whatever the bureaucrats want to spend it on. No additional money spent on roads would explain why roads are still crappy here in Illinois.
Just an off topic comment to add: Last week, I attended an open house for a new wind farm in four townships in the southwest corner of Livingston County. They had several big propaganda posters showing stats and all the wonderful things about wind turbines. One poster showed the MASSIVE amount of concrete that is needed to anchor those things into the ground. It made me wonder how many miles of road could be completely replaced or how many bridges could be fixed with all of that concrete they are dumping into huge holes in the ground. The wind farm has a life expectancy of 30 years. Then what?
(Additionally, another poster showed the number of tons of CO2 a wind farm will keep from being released into the atmosphere. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I should have asked one of the reps how many tons of CO2 will be released by manufacturing the steel and fiberglass components, trucking all of the turbine components to the site, trucking all of the concrete (or the components to make the concrete) to the site, all of the excavators and cranes needed to erect the turbines, etc. When you factor in all of that CO2, I doubt wind turbines are all that green after all.)
I checked with il.gov and the projected completion of the I74-I57 is scheduled to be completed in 2035 and then will needd to be resurfaced.