Are people entitled to free roads? If yes then the electorate will not care that fuel taxes and registration fees don't cover road maintenance costs - it's a di

Are people entitled to free roads? If yes then the electorate will not care that fuel taxes and registration fees don't cover road maintenance costs - it's a dignity not a price. If not then all roads should be toll roads or cars can be taxed per mile via odometer readings. Making things free at the point of use is not always the best way to help the poor or public. The inefficiency of no charge first come first serve could outweigh equity benefits. Having everyone pay in time (traffic jams) is a large hidden cost. Time is valuable even for those who lack money. The US Department of Transportation came up with a benchmark of $12.25/hour (50% of median household income) to evaluate the expected time savings of proposed transportation projects (2014). With free roads only time, fuel, and vehicle depreciation are considered. Roads are considered zero cost. There's minimal consideration of mass transit, carpooling, or moving closer to work. Just demands to add another lane and more parking everywhere. If roads were tolled or a lane was re-allocated to buses that could help poor people by making carpooling or riding a bus a realistic lower cost alternative to owning a car (or second car). Carpooling is a great example of how tolls incentivize high efficiency: 2 coworkers coming from the same neighborhood can cut their vehicle ownership expenses, the toll only hits half as hard, the people/hour throughput of the road goes up, and they take up less parking. Two people get to avoid congestion doubling time savings. Infrastructure is always shared. There are hard normative questions about how capacity should be allocated, and who should be subsidized. Making it free at the point of use doesn't eliminate those trade off questions.