A group called The Road Information Program held news conferences Thursday in several South Carolina cities to release a report that said the average driver in South Carolina pays at least $1,150 extra a year because of extra maintenance, fuel used and the cost of fatal crashes caused by bad roads.

At the news conference in Columbia were four of the state seven Department of Transportation commissioners, who say the state must raise the state’s 16.75-cent-a-gallon gas tax, unchanged for almost 30 years.

“You absolutely cannot maintain the state system with the money we have,” Commissioner John Hardee said.

But a tax increase of any kind is tough to get support for in Republican-dominated South Carolina. Newly-elected commission Chairman Jim Rozier said lawmakers must be willing to break their pledges to reject any tax increase made when the state’s roads weren’t crumbling. The report released Thursday said 46 percent of major South Carolina roads were in poor condition last year, compared to 32 percent in poor condition six years earlier.