People don't think of it as a subsidy because they are not charged per use a la toll road.

People also pay fuel tax, registration tax, and other taxes that fund the roads

I think the point is that if they had to do those things every time they used a road it would be more obvious (like buying a train ticket).

They do have to do it every time, through the fuel tax. Driving costs fuel. I guess people just don't think of it though.

it's not a subsidy if it's a user-pays system.

A subsidy is only a subsidy if users don't necessarily pay the full cost, and the rest is borne by some other group of people who _don't_ use the service.

One issue is that people often benefit from infrastructure without explicitly using it.

Example, road network isn't paid by car owners. But non-drivers clearly benefit from the road network, is the road network subsidized?

Other example, people who rarely take the train still benefit from rail infrastructure (freight, reduced congestion etc). Is the rail network subsidized?

Oh to clarify on that point, the majority of roadwork is paid for by property taxes in I believe everywhere in the USA. Certainly in Texas.

In the United States, often a large amount of road funding comes from property tax, so it has nothing to do with operating a car.

At least in the US, those taxes are nowhere near enough to pay for maintenance, let alone new construction. The rest is a straight subsidy from the general fund, typically paid for by passing the debt to our children.

Do you think that covers the cost of building and maintaining the road network infrastructure?

Do you think that it covers the cost of excess death caused by particle emissions and road fatalities?

We don't have the option to completely replace car infrastructure, but we shouldn't act like it isn't heavily subsidized.

That said, the positive externalities are also significant, but so are the positive externalities from rail traffic.

Everyone has access to a road. Not everyone has access to rail. No business can run without access to road, most businesses can run without access to rail.

There is basically no way to compare rail vs roads and making some arguments based on that.

Everyone who don't own a car have significantly less access to roads than someone who do.

Of course it's possible to compare the advantages and drawbacks of different modes of transport. No society can function without roads, but it's still a question of priorities.

> Everyone who don't own a car have significantly less access to roads than someone who do.

Most weeks I spend more hours cycling on these roads than driving.

Imagine how much less maintenance cost your biking causes than driving a car.

A lot less! So we (society) should be promoting cycling as much as feasible. Also bike parking, which is often forgotten. My town is very bike friendly in nearly every way, except there's no secure bike parking which limits which stores I can bike to.

> Everyone has access to a road. Not everyone has access to rail.

Similar argument can be made about highways to which not everybody has (direct) access, they are not a matter of life and death for most businesses and are heavily subsidized.

You don’t generally see figures from any jurisdiction (and I’ve seen numbers for a lot of countries and states) where those charges and taxes make much more than 50% or so of the actual costs of building and maintaining road networks, and that’s just the actual spend before even trying to quantify all the social and environmental costs!

I don't really follow that, a toll is a way for it not to be (or to be less) subsidised?

I remember Brad deLong did back of the napkin analysis to determine how much a bart fare should be including the cost of freeways. It was minus $2.00 or something.

Calculating the subsidy associated with state maintenance of roads for private vehicles is difficult.

Some basic level of signage and hazard prevention (potholes, ice etc) is necessary for emergency vehicles and other government operations.

Thereafter, although there is some maintenance cost associated with the road wear from private vehicles and the additional infrastructure required for higher traffic volumes, we don’t have an easy way to calculate the cost.

Wouldn't the very patterns of development be different (and more amenable to rail) if the state didn't spend oodles of money building nice roads to make sprawl livable?

At a high level, urbanisation rates increased through the road building binge of the 20th century.

Perhaps those new migrants to cities would’ve chosen to stay in the countryside without roads? Worsening the economics of rail.

Or maybe they’d use their collective voting power to get more rail friendly new towns built?

I don’t think the answer is obvious.

Before the road building binge there was the rail building binge, though limited to the largest cities.

As an example, see the history of the Metropolitan Line in London.

Sprawl happens when there is available undeveloped land. Roads are just a symptom.

People build outwards first and then upwards.

There is plenty of undeveloped land that people don't move to because there are no roads to get to.

We have more than a century of data showing that roads are subject to induced demand. If you build more roads, people move and sprawl (and take more trips in general) until traffic is once again unbearably bad.

If you build more lanes, more people move further out. Roads create sprawl.

And active urban planning avoids sprawl.

Also bridges and tunnels, which seem to be very expensive to maintain.

I disagree that it's difficult: excepting toll roads and "unassumed" roads‡, the subsidy is 100% (and most toll roads are likely subsidized at a substantial fraction of their cost, since the tolls are rarely high enough to be self-sufficient).

It doesn't matter whether the money used to pay for road maintenance comes from property taxes (like in Toronto), income taxes (Ontario areas not maintained by cities / regions / counties), or gas taxes (much of the U.S.?). If you're not paying per use of the road, there is a 100% subsidy on the maintenance of the road.

There are definite costs to not maintaining those roads (people won't move where there aren't roads; unmaintained roads will result in more costs to the people using those roads as their vehicles are damaged more frequently—which may result in costs to the municipality for not properly maintaining those roads), but we should not pretend roads are self-sustaining or aren't entirely subsidized.

‡ Unassumed roads are those built privately by the landowners in common and are not maintained by the local government. When used for private dwellings, these roads usually fall under the sway of the local government after a period of time, even if they were built initially by a subdivision subcontractor.