this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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The point the seems to have missed you is that taxes should be what pays for the road
I just said – you're burdening other people with taxes for damage that you cause. Car infrastructure meant for drivers destroys the fabric of cities/towns, destroys the environment, and costs a shit ton of money on top of that.
Using more toll roads and similar things means you can "tax" people a lot more proportionately to how much they use cars on public infrastructure, instead of punishing people that don't use cars or use them less than others. It would be entitled to assume that everyone else should pay more taxes because you want to use an expensive destructive and dangerous mode of transportation rather than just take public transport or bike.
I also find it hilarious how my state gives tax credit for using/owning an electric car, but not for not using any car at all... this kind of shit is representative of the norm across most of the US, car drivers are directly subsidized by non-drivers.
(It's obviously a lot more complicated than "make more toll roads" since some jobs actually need vehicles, plus it'd make sense to mostly do it around densely populated areas)
I pay for schools i dont go to, hospitals in places ill never go to, roads i dont use. The point of taxes is to pay for the things that better everyone even if you yourself dont personally use them.
Okay, but schools and hospitals don't destroy the fabric of cities and don't destroy the environment. Schools and hospitals actually improve society a lot and SHOULD be subsidized.
A majority of the money spent on car infrastructure does NOT go to improving society. In the current state of things, cars harm society, and the majority of people using cars don't need cars. Most of the money spent on car infrastructure should be put into actually making transportation not car-dependent, and as I said earlier car drivers should subsidize this.
Roads allow our current society to function, long haul drivers allow our current society to function. We will need to rely on these things for the foreseeable future even if we did implent the sweeping changes you seem to forment today we would still need to use roads for decades while we changed over. That is why we should all be subsidizing the roads, the are the logistical veins of society.
That is something I pointed out already – a lot of things require cars, emergency services and logistics and some trades and what not. That doesn't reduce the need to put a larger amount of the cost onto people who use roads – most of whom don't need to. I also pointed out that it's not as simple as put toll roads everywhere, and we need to figure out the most efficient system for making it easier for those who do need it for their job.
Toll roads allow us to fund better infrastructure and reduce the attractiveness of using cars around urban areas, and they allow us to punish non-car users less – now the portion of their taxes that would normally go to car infrastructure can go to things that would benefit everyone, and we can more proportionately charge people based on how much they cost the public.
As I said, the average American pays way less proportionately than most Europeans do for car infrastructures. They have a much higher tax on car-related stuff, and usually a lot more toll roads. It makes people more inclined to use other modes of transportation that are better for society when they don't need to use a car.
But a lot of drivers are very entitled, they want to offload the costs of their car usage onto others as long as it means they don't have to deal with toll roads. It's a completely selfish thing – in areas where non-car travel is an option car drivers are a detriment to everyone else and increase everyone else's cost of living, you can't use car infrastructure unless you are a car driver (which is what separates it from funding e.g. public transport or hospitals). They should be charged a fair amount for that.
It would be great if we could shift to a better system integrating better and much more robust public transit, but in much of the U.S. driving a car is the only option. I understand being upset with the system we have, but taking out your frustrations on many people who don't really have a choice is counterintuitive.
Wait but cars don't damage the road (much) - trucks do. We should all be mad we are so heavily subsidizing the cost of moving goods to our grocery stores, construction sites, and anywhere else.