A new product came on the market in 1920.  The Band-Aid (registered trademark symbol is supposed to be here) became so popular that its name has become a generic term for anything that temporarily solves a problem.

Missourians will vote on a gas tax increase in a few days and I’m going to vote for it because I am part of the problem the proposed tax increase seeks to temporarily solve.

My car’s dash tells me all kinds of stuff including the cumulative fuel mileage since I bought the car in 2014.  This is the way it looked yesterday.

Another “screen” told me that I have driven this car about 63,000 miles.  In all of that driving, town and highway, summer and winter, short trips to the grocery store or longer trips to, say, Nashville or Indianapolis, this car has averaged 25.4 miles per gallon, pretty good for a 300 hp car that can hit 60 in a little over five seconds.

This car replaced one that got 26 mpg, tops, on a long trip.  Obviously I don’t burn as much gas in this newer car as I did in the older one making me one of those who doesn’t contribute as much in gas taxes with the present car as I did with my previous one. But I drive the same roads most of the time and cross the same bridges most of the time as I did with the previous car.

I am, therefore, one of hundreds of thousands of the people on our roads who are the collective cause of our Transportation Department’s long decline in financial ability to operate our highways.

As a good and responsible citizen who prefers not to replace his shock absorbers anytime soon or fall through a bridge floor, I’m going to vote to increase the tax on the gas I burn.

Frankly, it’s kind of a chicken way to go about it—a ten-cent increase that’s phased in during four years so the percentage increase is small enough that it won’t be too painful to the parsimonious Missourians who have been told for a couple of decades now that it’s okay to think state services and programs can get by on less and less and less and less because the people know better how to spend their money than the government does.

But the potholes and the patches have become such an inconvenience to motorists that maybe they’ll decide the government really can make better use of 2.5 cents than they can.

But this is only a band-aid.   Only a temporary solution.  A good friend is a reason the gas tax isn’t a long-term solution to the problems with our transportation system.

My friend recently bought a Tesla 3.   He likes it a lot.   He’s had it for about a month and has not put a single gallon of gas in it.  (Anybody who buys gas for their Tesla might be planning on setting the thing on fire.) Tesla claims drivers can get 310 miles out of a full battery charge but battery technology is moving quickly and when a 500-mile battery car hits the market at a reasonable price, watch out.

Even 310 miles isn’t bad.  We’ve been told Teslas come with a directory that can be called up on the big cockpit screen and shows where there are chargers—such as these we saw the other day at a fast foot place in Limon, Colorado. It’s like of like the printed directories that came out in the 1970s when a lot of people started driving diesels, showing them where there were gas stations with diesel pumps for cars.

You’ll notice there’s a Tesla like the one my friend has that is getting a re-charge while the driver is inside the Limon restaurant enjoying a casual cheeseburger or something.  Tesla says it has 1,359 Supercharger stations with 11, 234 superchargers like those in Limon. Plug in for thirty minutes and you’re good for another 170 miles.  That gets you to 480 miles with a lunch stop on the way.

Tesla is quickly getting competitors and that means prices will become more reasonable and that means more of us will be paying zero gas taxes before long.  I have thought that each of the last two cars I have bought would be the last completely gas-powered vehicles I would own.  A Tesla, by the way, will get to 60 in about half the time my current car does.

So a ten-cent gas tax increase (spread through four years) is only a band-aid.  It’s going to take more than a Band-Aid to permanently assure our road system doesn’t go back to gravel.  We hope those who formulated the ten cent (after four years) gas tax increase are thinking about what comes when tens of thousands of motorists don’t use gasoline or diesel fuel at all.

I’m going to vote for the band-aid.  The four-year phase-in means it’s flesh-colored so it’s not so noticeable.