“For decades, federal highway spending was covered completely by federal gas tax revenue. Fuel taxes are not exactly a user fee, but they do at least charge people who drive for the roads they drive on.
An even more market-oriented solution would involve giving private companies a larger role in building and maintaining highways and city streets while shifting the costs of those projects onto motorists, truckers, and other road users through tolls.
Since 2008, however, a gap between gas tax revenue and mounting federal transportation spending has required a $157 billion infusion from the general fund. Even before the 2021 infrastructure bill was passed, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting that the gap would grow.
The infrastructure package did include a few modest reforms. It created a pilot program to study a mileage-based user fee, and it expanded private activity bonds, which help private companies raise capital for infrastructure projects. But the overall trend is toward more freeloading freeways.”