[Doctor_Fegg]

In the context of this article, the difference is not as much as you’d think. Basically every road in the UK is paved. That isn’t true of the sparsely populated parts of the US.

The US has 4.3m km of paved road for a population of 331m. That's $287bn per year upkeep (at the $20/ft rate), so each resident needs to pay $864/year for road upkeep.

The UK has 0.4m km of paved road for a population of 67m. That's $28bn per year, so each resident needs to pay $421/year for road upkeep.

In other words, Americans should only need to pay 2x the tax, not 10x the tax.

[m0llusk]

This analysis is worthless. A good place to start would be with comparison of road design standards which would show that American roads are built much wider and with more additional features, which is stuff like curbs and not necessarily sidewalks or bike paths. If Americans started building roads to British standards then there would be an uproar.