• cryostars@lemmyf.uk
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    7 months ago

    Funding for the development and maintenance of roads in the U.S. come from a variety of taxes such as vehicle registration fees, wheel taxes and taxes on gasoline and motor fuel. So , we do pay for using car infrastructure

    • force@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yes, but not nearly enough. Those kinds of taxes are extremely low (especially compared to e.g. the EU) and form only a fraction of the costs of car infrastructure.

      All those hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in infrastructure bills, all the regular car infrastructure maintanence costs, a large chunk is paid for by taxes that everyone gets regardless of how much they use a car. And all the extra non-tax costs (in both time and money) that non-drivers have to pay because car-dependent infrastructure fucks up transportation for everyone else, that is a massive charge.

      • theonyltruemupf@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Even in the EU, car related taxes can’t pay for all the car related infrastructure. Building and maintaining roads is crazy expensive.

      • ugh@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        People who don’t drive don’t pay any of those taxes that were used as examples. I’d love to see the numbers that you’re basing your argument on.

        • Square Singer@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          Let me google that for you: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/

          There are literally tens of thousands of articles like this one.

          TLDR:

          • less than 50% of car infrastructure cost is paid for by driving related taxes
          • An average of $1100 in general tax per household per year is used to subsidise driving
          • Car infrastructure receives more subsidies from general tax than transit, passenger rail, cycling and pedestrian programs combined.

          No, drivers pull their own weight in regards to car related taxes.