[jmedefind]

It's been talked about a lot for a long time. But nothing ever gets pass congress.

Obama tried to pass a lot of infrastructure spending as part of the 2008 Stimulation package, but a lot didn't make it into the final budget.

Everyone wants it fixed, but no one wants to pay for it.

Many states fund their roads and bridges via a gas tax. But no one wants to raise the price of gas. So nothing gets fixed through that channel either.

It's a real problem in the US and our divisive and nut job "party first" politics.

[vermontdevil]

Some states divert a % of the gas tax to other budget lines instead of transportation infrastructure.

Then people want to either raise the tax or resist against it without realizing that 100% of the gas tax should be 100% for what it is originally intended to be.

You can find numerous examples by googling Gas Tax Diversions such as this one:

https://www.irtba.org/GasTax

[stuckagain]

All states spend much more on roads than they take in on gas taxes, so the issue of whether gas taxes are "diverted" is moot. Every state also "diverts" a huge amount of general revenues to road building and maintenance. To stay with your example of Illinois, which recently passed a "lockbox" ballot measure for road funds, tolls and fuel taxes take in 1.6 billion a year but the state spends over 4 billion a year just on road maintenance alone, not even counting ancillary expenses like DMV, State Police, etc.