What do Oklahoma’s roads look like?

• Thousands of county and state bridges need repair or replacement
• Thousands of highway miles are rated critical or inadequate
• Hundreds of two lane narrow roads exist that are 56% more likely to cause accidents
• Hundreds of wooden bridges still in use, many built during President Roosevelt’s administration

So what’s the problem?

Funding. Oklahomans pay more than $1 billion in road taxes and fees each year, but for decades only about $218 million of these tax dollars make their way back to state highways and bridges.  Funding for Oklahoma’s highways was stagnant for more than 30 years. In fact, Oklahoma spent more money in 1985 than in 2004 to maintain highways. During that same 30 years traffic on state roads increased 50% and the cost to build and maintain roads increased 75%.

Thankfully, the Oklahoma Legislature provided significant increases to transportation funding over the last three years, which will provide an anticipated $625 million over the next decade in additional funding. This is a tremendous first step, but we still have billions in unfunded repairs to catch up on.

How do we fix it?

Funding. At $35 billion our state transportation system is our largest asset. We must protect its future by restoring it with continued increases our financial investments in transportation to insure Oklahoma’s future.

This will take significant infusions of increased funding from a source that is dedicated and permanent. TRUST believes the most logical choice is to use more of the existing $1 billion in road taxes and fees Oklahomans already pay each year. Namely, TRUST believes the 40% of Motor Vehicle fees that are diverted to general government spending should be put back toward transportation needs.