I'm having trouble interpreting this. What is 100% here? Cars fully pay for roads? Or roads are 100% subsidised?
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Per usual, so many hypocrites here. Without roads you would not exist. Your emergency services, your grocery stores deliveries, and the products you buy all use roads and highways. If you don't want a car or a road to drive on, move to a mountain away from everyone and stop bothering people.
Wow, edgy take. You came here to fuckcars with a wild, untamed, edgy take like that?
yeah, roads, not highways
Yes, roads are important. Attributing costs to who or what is causing those costs is still a good idea.
Paying for roads is fine, paying for 10 lanes of roads that only exist because the real costs aren't included in all kinds of decision making is dumb.
I do think it's important to reject the neoliberal demand that all services pay for themselves. I think a heat map showing percentages of local/state and federal funds spent on non-car transit infrastructure would be more useful and interesting. Or, a heat map showing the percentage of roads in each state which the state is currently able to afford upkeep on. As the big issue with our road funding model is that it's easy to build, almost impossible to maintain.
You can have all that without 10-lane highways.
Sure not everyone drives a lot or even own a car but they do use the roads. Do they shop? Do they buy groceries? Do they use public utilities? Do they expect emergency service to come when needed?
A lot of things need roads besides your personal car. Kind of a crazy take to say only car owners need to pay for road infrastructure. I'm with you in spirit but exercise a little common sense.
by this logic you should be vehemently defending people's right to bike and walk on the roads, surely?
I'd be ok with roads being fully user-funded and having the additional cost be added to the things I buy instead of them being tax subsidized.
Then the people who already paid for the roads would have to pay again. The first people pay the the roads so everyone can use it. I'm your scenario there would be no roads for your good and services to enter your area for you to buy anything to get road taxed on.
Just in the most basic example if you a want the fire truck to get to your burning house doing 50mph you need to help with roads. Otherwise you can wait it out while they go slowly down a dirt trail to get to you. Unless you don't want to pay for the fire station either since you never use it or only rarely use it. You see. It can go on forever there's no end. Again I'm asking for common sense.
The first people pay the the roads so everyone can use it
if we reset road costs from right now, the people using the roads have got a lot for free from general taxation… i think it’s fair that their current payment - rego, fuel excise, etc - covers both maintenance and investment… the original investment has already been paid many times over by other people
The first people pay the the roads so everyone can use it
roads exist… i think everyone here isn’t arguing for reparations, just “for the future”
if you a want the fire truck to get to your burning house doing 50mph you need to help with roads
okay but that’s the beauty of currency: the fire department pays for roads like everyone else, and that means the fire department budget gets increased, and probably taxes to match (though overall eliminating taxes to cover roads would probably come out in the wash mostly)… i don’t think anyone here is against paying a bit to ensure emergency services can fulfil their mission, but paying for roads is an indirect way of doing that
what if there’s a cheaper way of providing emergency services? in the case where we are subsidising roads, we’re artificially saying almost that the fire department must use them… to do anything else would be a cost, where roads are free… the fire department like anyone else should pay for their costs, and find the most efficient solutions
Again I'm asking for common sense.
no, you’re asking for status quo… if you took all the money allocated to roads and either gave tax cuts (which would mostly get gobbled up by increases in goods to cover the cost of transport), or redirect to emergency services (which would go toward paying for roads that they use), then people have the choice to buy goods and services that don’t use roads rather than artificially making roads the cheap option
This map cannot be correct. For example, it shows California drivers paying much of the costs of their highways and that is not the case at all.
I don't doubt it, but how do you know? Can you share a contradictory source?
Public funding for California’s transportation system comes from numerous sources. Historically, about one-third of total transportation funding has come from state sources [gas tax]. Local sources—such as local sales tax revenues, transit fares, and city and county general funds—have made up slightly less than half of total funding. The remaining amount (roughly one-fifth of total funding in most years) comes from federal sources that are provided to the state or directly to local governments.
https://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2023/4821/ZEV-Impacts-on-Transportation-121323.pdf
I will probably get down voted because this is fuckcars. But For Ohio, The vast majority of these taxes for road funds come from fuel taxes and motor registration fees. Some come from property taxes, which I think is reasonable seeing as they have roads that go right to their houses.
This seems ok to me. People who use vehicles end up paying for the roads they rely on.
And those who don't have cars still get access to the roads.
According to the map, Ohio is one of the outliers.
Do you have a source for those numbers? Id be surprised if the fuel +registration taxes cover even 1/3 of the cost of roads. Maybe they could cover basic maintaince like painting, plowing, and potholes, but initial construction or resurfacing likely needs heavy investment from elsewhere
Edit: i see the OP does have a source for tax revenue numbers, but it is unclear exactly what is covered under the taxes. Does it include funds for police for traffic enforcement? Funding for emergency services responding to accidents? The site isn't clear if new road construction or lane widening is included in the budgets as road maintaince or not.
And they’re still just awful.
My ass in NJ looking at the roads going "...think they're saving money by doing almost nothing"
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