“There is no industry that could possibly be successful if you have expenses that grow with inflation and you have revenues that don’t… But that is the story of our Transportation Trust Fund.”

No, those weren’t the words of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (although they really should have been). They were actually spoken by Delaware Governor Jack Markell, who proposed a 10-cent gas tax earlier this week. The tax increase is expected to generate $50 million a year, and would be used to address projects that have been delayed because of “uncertainty in the funding for the Transportation Trust Fund.”

Governor Markell’s proposal comes less than a month after neighboring Pennsylvania enacted a gas tax increase. Pennsylvania’s gas tax, prior to the increase, was 32.3 cents per gallon, the 15th-highest gas tax in the nation. Delaware’s gas tax is currently 23 cents per gallon, the 31st-highest in the nation.

Meanwhile, on the eastern banks of the Delaware River, the gas tax in New Jersey stands, as it has since 1988, at 14.5 cents per gallon — the third-lowest in the country. It might make sense to keep the Garden State’s gas tax this low if infrastructure needs were few and the state’s Transportation Trust Fund were flush. But that’s simply not the case.