There are already tolls on lots of roads and bridges, and you have to pay to park in public parking garages and street spaces. You have to pay to enter national

There are already tolls on lots of roads and bridges, and you have to pay to park in public parking garages and street spaces. You have to pay to enter national parks, get services from municipal utilities, ride transit, use the courts, register your vehicle, etc. There is nothing philosophically wrong with the government charging people money to use its property and services. No rule of thumb really helps you decide outright whether something the government provides should be free. What you have to do is to evaluate whether in each case pricing makes sense and how much to charge. Roads are free mainly because they are difficult to charge and because for most roads there is no point to doing so, as most roads are uncongested nearly all the time. Downtown Manhattan is an exception and thus requires a special solution. It's okay to believe public schools should be free and still support congestion pricing. Congestion pricing has demonstrated that it works at solving road traffic externalities. In London it has saved many lives from reduced accidents, both in and around the charging zone. In Stockholm it has reduced asthma attacks substantially. The New York subway needs lots of upgrades and congestion pricing will pay for some of them (although it would be nice if they could get their costs under control). Public schools are doing fine being free and paid for by taxes. By way of fairness, I guess one could argue that since every kid by law has to go to school they should be free. But I think we actually have the free system simply because it has worked for a long time. There are problems with education quality in the US, but they aren't due to how schools are paid for. We know that because there are better schools in other countries that are still free. By contrast, downtown streets are as crowded and polluting and dangerous as they are mainly because they are free.