House Bill 1461 is barreling through Indiana’s Senate and headed straight for Mike Braun’s desk. At first glance, increasing the maximum speed on Indiana’s highways and fixing roads, bridges, sidewalks, and potholes sounds great, but what is the cost of this?
This bill proposes converting major interstates–I-80, I-94, and I-65-into toll roads. Additionally, there is a provision to include wheel taxes (an annual tax to be paid alongside vehicle registration–specifically designed to target vehicle owners, to raise funds for city budgets) for cities to receive the Community Crossroads matching grant, a grant that previously has been a tremendous source of funding for many smaller cities. They could opt out of the wheel tax, but then they will miss out on the grant.
Approximately 204,000 vehicles travel on Indiana’s interstates every day. This accounts for semi-trucks and other work vehicles, as well as people commuting to work or running errands to places that they can’t get to otherwise due to the devastating underdevelopment of our sidewalks and public transportation. In Indianapolis, driving isn’t a choice–it’s a necessity.
Physical and financial tolls on taxpayers
What do we get for our forced dependency on cars? Craters disguised as roads. Our roads are so bad that they rank fifth in the list of the nation’s worst cities for potholes. This didn’t happen overnight: it’s the result of a system that’s been in the making for years, since the end of World War II. But we don’t have to go back that far.
The current transportation fund for Indiana is something of a pooling system from the whole state divided up to different cities based on population and road mileage, not volume. This means that if you have a one-mile stretch of a two-lane road in rural Indiana, it receives the same amount of funding as a one-mile stretch of a four-lane stretch on I-465.
Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is responsible for highways whereas Department of Public Works (DPW) is responsible for inner city roads.
INDOT receives a lion’s share of their funding from gasoline tax–which is falling behind due to increased fuel efficiency and more reliance on EVs. DPW lost about $20 million from their budget last year.
Tax cuts leave Hoosiers out in the cold
What about the winter? Every year DPW and INDOT are always a step behind when it comes to our snow and ice season. Despite complaints every year that the city doesn’t preemptively salt the roads before a big snow or freezing rain, Indianapolis citizens always find themselves navigating treacherous roads, sometimes for weeks-long stretches. Many states use brine to more easily plow snow, and can help prevent or slow road deterioration. But here? We slide across black ice and dodge potholes then foot the repair bills ourselves.
In addition to the budget cuts to DPW, public health is seeing a $60 million cut and public education is seeing a 5% cut to its funding. Furthermore, the controversial recently-passed Senate Bill 1 forces public education to share its funds with charter schools. Charter schools are unaccountable to the public and rife with corruption. As such, they last anywhere between one and around 20 years. When we raise these issues with our elected “representatives,” we are met with a complete lack of willingness to entertain our serious and factual concerns.
Workers: Attacked from all angles
Whenever workers win, the ruling class finds a way to take them away from us. If we win a living wage, for example, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and more will increase. Even increased rates and extended hours of parking meters are essentially another tax on the working class. Landlords capture their share by increasing rent, and Citizens Energy and AES recently got their share by increasing gas, water, and electric bills.
They don’t hide this. In February 2025, some people’s electricity bills were half of their mortgage payments!
With wages stagnant, the cost of living increasing, and conditions worsening all around, the ruling class now wants us to pay an additional tax that is nothing more than another cut from our paycheck: a toll to go to work or do errands!
Meanwhile, we are left out of all the perks the corporations get. Unlike INDOT, working people do not reap any rewards from the gasoline tax, and EVs are not as easily accessible to majority of workers.
Want to fix the problem? Build walkable cities and towns. Fund reliable public transportation; most of the problems listed in this article would be eradicated on their own. End the need for long, expensive commutes. Stop designing cities for cars and cops and start designing them for people.
Imagine a city where you can walk to a neighborhood market, where families aren’t forced to live far from work, where every street doesn’t scream “buy another car:” Fewer pedestrian deaths, fewer wrecks, fewer bills, fewer barriers to living with dignity.
Easy solutions reveal the real struggle
Working people completely reject HB 1461 and all taxes imposed on our city’s already impoverished masses.
Rejecting these measures is one thing. “Sure,” many will say, “we agree, but what else are we going to do?” This is where we must arm ourselves with not only the facts but the grace to patiently explain that the solutions are not only possible but entirely achievable within the current framework.
As PSL Indianapolis detailed in their analysis of the 2025 City-County Council budget, there is more than enough money to fix our immediate needs. The problem is that the dominant political parties–Democrat and Republican–are completely unwilling to even consider using that money for the people.
We encourage everyone concerned about these issues to get involved with Citizen’s Action Coalition and Touch Grass, Indy!
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Featured image: During his March 2025 visit for the Common Unity 2.0 Concert, Leon Benson puts a spare tire after a driver hit a pothole so deep it damaged their bumper. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center.