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Officials are considering raising the state's gasoline tax to provide more money to fix the state's ailing transportation system. A worst-case scenario would cost the average New Jersey motorist an extra $200 a year at the pump.

(Saed Hindash/The Star-Ledger)

A hike in the state gasoline tax to pay for new transportation projects could cost motorists as much as $200 a year on average, according to figures from AAA and lawmakers, who are trying to figure out how to stabilize the state's financially strapped Transportation Trust Fund.



The cost of a tax hike to the average motorist is a key component in the politically sensitive process of raising the gas tax, the main source of revenue for the trust fund, which pays for new construction and overhauls involving the state's roads, bridges, rail lines and ferries.

Last week, the Assembly Transportation, Public Works and Independent Authorities Committee began bracing the public for what could be the gas tax’s first increase since 1988, with the first in a series of hearings on the trust fund. Business and labor leaders, elected officials and transit advocates testified on the desperate need to improve New Jersey’s crumbling roads and bridges and its overstressed rail lines to insure economic growth and safety, not to mention preventing costly flat tires and broken axels. Some of them dared to state outright that a tax hike was needed.

The estimated $200 annual cost takes into account the average 620 or so gallons of fuel that AAA says motorists consumed each year multiplied by a 31-cents-per gallon tax increase. This increase plus other revenues,such as a comparable increase for diesel, would raise an additional $1.6 billion a year for the trust fund, according to the state’s non-partisan Office of Legislative Services.

Gas guzzlers would pay more, Sunday drivers less, and a more modest hike would mean a smaller dollar-increase for everyone at the pump.



Assemblyman Scott Rumana, the ranking Republican on the state transportation committee, said he invoked the 31-cent figure during Wednesday's hearing as a high-end benchmark for discussion purposes only, and he made it clear he was not advocating such a big increase.

Rather, Rumana and the committee’s Democratic chairman, Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), say financing the trust fund is likely to involve a more modest gas tax hike, combined with other new revenues, possibly from the sales tax or New jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway tolls, shares of which are also dedicated to the trust fund.

Reaction by the public to word of an increase has been mixed.



"Raising the gas tax will kill me," said Adam Vuksanic, a who like many other Passaic County residents, has no mass transit option to get to work. "I lost a good job due to the economy and am making little more than half the pay that I was."

Juan Rolon, president of a 1,300-member independent truckers group known as Federation 18, said truckers already pay a higher fuel tax than most motorists, because the state's levy on diesel is 3 cents higher than on gasoline



"The government shouldn't look at truckers or drivers of cars as an ATM," said Rolon. "If we stopped doing these wars we're fighting all around the world, we could fix the roads."

But even truckers are divided on the issue.

“We would have no problem paying the additional tax under one condition: that the improvements are truck-related,” said Jeff Bader, president of the Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers, which represents fleet owners. Bader said the tax money should not be used only for the Garden State Parkway or other commercially restricted roads.

Others supporting a tax hike include he National Motorists Association and AAA.

“AAA generally opposes increases in taxes and fees that rise the cost for our members,” said Tracy Noble, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which includes New Jersey. “But there is clearly a real crisis for the roads and bridges in New Jersey, and to that end we do support a modest increase in the gas tax.”

A Rutgers-Eagleton Poll of 800 New Jersey adults released in April found that 66 percent said they opposed raising the gas tax, compared to 31 percent who supported the increase.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Union) now awaiting a hearing by the Senate Transportation Committee would raise the gas tax by 5 cents a year for three years, or a total of 15 cents. Lesniak said the committee's chairman, Sen. Nicholas Sacco (D-Hudson), was receptive to the bill. But a Sacco spokesman, Phil Swibinski, said the senator had no immediate plans to post it.



While the current taxes will continue to pour money into the trust fund, transportation bond debt has grown so dramatically since the fund's creation in 1984 that officials say virtually all of its dedicated revenues will be consumed by debt service payments as of the next fiscal year. The proceeds of the gas tax hike now being discussed would essentially jump start the fund, allowing it to pay for new projects.



The transportation committee's next trust fund hearing is scheduled for Oct. 14 on the Rutgers Piscataway campus.

Gov. Chris Christie has resisted raising the gas tax during his five years in office, but he and his newly appointed transportation commissioner, Jamie Fox, have both said recently that nothing was off the table in terms of how to fund the state’s transportation needs.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow hin on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.