[acchow]

That’s great. Then you should keep enjoying your car. I just hope you don’t stop people from trying to enjoy a subway by supporting politicians that are anti-train.

Same goes for HSR. You can drive or fly between cities if you want, just don’t try to stop HSR development please. Lots of people want it.

[danielrpa]

I'd never do that, I'm not against subways and buses at all. Let's then ensure that the city pays for that through city taxes (sales, property) and bus/subway tickets, instead of the Federal or State governments.

[sundaeofshock]

And let’s pay for all highways via tolls. No subsidies, right?

[danielrpa]

That would be okay with me if we could actually get to this level of granularity. Same thing for the streets used by public transportation? Subways alone won't work everywhere, so we'll need buses, and these will need highways too and pay for them in the fare.

I think most governments decided that it's not practical to get to this level of granularity, instead trying to get the cost closer to the user. For instance, having vehicle licensing and gas taxes paying for streets and highways in general based on usage statistics. For electric vehicles, governments are studying approaches like charging by mile driven using tracking devices (has its own problems).

But in my earlier proposal, getting the costs closer to the user would mean for trains and subways to pay for their own tracks and energy, and buses to pay for their streets and highways through licensing and gas (and for special bus lanes directly through tickets)

[6510]

I don't own a car but I use to think it is worth paying for roads since I benefit from postal services, busses and stuff being delivered to stores.

But I have no idea how road consumption is distributed. (they don't last forever)

I could in theory just as easily pay for that though the normal channels. It can just be included in the price of goods.

Parking spaces consume a very expensive amount of space in cities. If someone hardly ever drives their car(s) sould they have to pay the same?

I'm not a fan of capitalism but if you want such a system to work it should be allowed to scale prices with cost? It would have to be regulated to avoid driving up the prices to what people can afford.

Bicycles and pedestrians use roads too. Billing everyone doesn't seem very challenging. Many highly used areas could really use maintenance and cleaning.

I honestly have no idea which products and services would get more expensive but the benefits and cost are distributed weirdly.