10/6/03-The Utah Department of Transportation has announced plans to raise the state’s fuel tax to help pay for long-range upgrades of roadways statewide.
The agency wants to increase fuel taxes a nickel in 2005 – and every six years thereafter. The funds would pay for $3.6 billion in road projects over the next three decades.
The plan proposes about 500 statewide projects, including $36 million for reconstruction of I-15 in Utah County. Other projects include adding passing lanes along U.S.-6, replacing aging parts of I-80 and fixing road surfaces.
The proposal, dubbed “Transportation 2030,” is subject to the Legislature ’s approval when it meets in January.

1/28/03-Utah lawmakers are discussing the possibility of boosting the state's fuel tax as much as 10 cents a gallon in the next few years, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
As the Legislature confronts the state's current budget crisis, they must decide how the state can keep working on roads and still pay off the millions in bond debt taken on to rebuild I-15 and other major roads.
Some lawmakers believe the solution is to increase the fuel tax, already the seventh highest in the nation, The Tribune reported. An additional 10-cent hike in the fuel tax would raise another $130 million in state revenue.
"Our difficulty is we have got significant road projects in the future and we're going to need another gas-tax increase, sometime in the next two to three years," House Speaker Marty Stephens (R-Farr West), told the newspaper.