Not really. Those types of things don't even cover operation of the land as vehicle transport, since the highway trust fund has to keep getting bailed out. Bu

Not really. Those types of things don't even cover operation of the land as vehicle transport, since the highway trust fund has to keep getting bailed out. But I'm not really talking about the operational costs, I'm talking about land rents. There are surely places in the USA where there are no competing uses for land, and having ppl drive on it is not depriving the public at large of anything. But this stops being true in any town or city above a modest size. For non-transport land uses, we ask those uses to compete amongst themselves for the land. But for some reason, we don't apply this same logic to vehicle transport. It's considered the govt's job to expand the supply of land for vehicles in an unlimited fashion. If anyone suggested it should be govt job to provide unlimited free land for any other use - housing is the most obvious example - they'd get laughed out of the room. But put 4 wheels on it and suddenly they will bulldoze whole neighbourhoods to find the land for it. So my modest proposal is that if people want to drive on some publicly owned land, the govt should put the use of the land for a fixed period, say 50-100 years and auction the rights. Let the prospective drivers compete with other uses - say apartment buildings - for the land and see what the public is missing out on by setting the price at $0.