Funding roads (taxes, user fees etc)

[ijmorlan]

Tomato Tomato.  [Without the accent, I guess it makes no sense ]

In a country like ours, those who don't use still pay... and I'm OK with that.  The "road tax" / "tolls" / "driving is free" debate will not be solved here.  Its no different that those without kids who have to pay school taxes.  (As a parent I thank you.  I'm sure I am paying for a service you use that I don't).

Coke

It absolutely is different.  We as a society are perfectly willing to pay for things which provide net communal benefits.

Mass motoring has enormous social and environmental costs which offset those benefits.

Education has no such costs.

They're entirely different.  I'm happy to pay for education.  I'm happy to pay for transit.   I'm not happy to pay to buy out entire neighbourhoods of homes, pave over enormous swaths of the Earth, just so we can continue to pretend that automobiles are the *only* way to get around.

Also, each child needs but can only consume one education from the publicly funded system. By contrast, one person can use an enormous amount of road resources, or none, depending on how they structure their life.

Then, on top of a massive social expenditure for the benefit only of those who choose to drive, we require everybody to participate through parking minima. It is literally illegal to build a development in most places that is optimized for the use of non-drivers.

Then as if that’s not enough, some “libertarians” are gung-ho road boosters. It’s just absurd. To be fair, some of them think that highways should be privately built and operated toll roads, which is at least consistent (and might actually work better than we think).