Public land use most often correlates its fees to related expenses. The value of the land is irrelevant to public use; it is held for the general public, not for value as an asset.
If the cost of the burden of the roads themselves increases, the fuel tax should increase. If there are fewer drivers (or lower fuel consumption overall), the fuel tax should increase to cover their portion of the road budget. These directly correspond to the same mechanics as rent. Sure, there's going to be political and bargaining realities beyond that, but that's the general basis.
Plus, bike lanes and sidewalks are a government owned & run part of many roadworks, so it's not just paying car owners that are served, so if anything the fuel tax payers are subsidizing this benefit to bicyclists and pedestrians.
> Public land use most often correlates its fees to related expenses. The value of the land is irrelevant to public use; it is held for the general public, not for value as an asset.
Like any asset, the value of land reflects how much value it could produce if put to other uses. (If anything it's an underestimate, since public use may well be able to produce greater benefits than private use, if those benefits would be widely distributed and hard for a private organisation to capture). Not including the value of the land creates an extreme status quo bias - if you were considering whether a new road or railway was worthwhile you would certainly include the cost of the land in the costs, and if some scheme enabled selling off a public asset (e.g. the recent moving of the BBC) you would include that in the benefits. The right thing is to recognise that the land is an assert worth x amount annually, and that we have a choice between using it for a road or some other purpose. Road maintenance costs are not the only cost any more than building maintenance cost is the only cost of a building.
> If the cost of the burden of the roads themselves increases, the fuel tax should increase. If there are fewer drivers (or lower fuel consumption overall), the fuel tax should increase to cover their portion of the road budget. These directly correspond to the same mechanics as rent.
Not at all directly. Different vehicles do different amounts of road wear for a given amount of fuel, and the impact of a litre's worth of pollution can be very different depending where it's burned. So while fuel tax is part of it, there's a place for things like the congestion charge or the new emissions charge as well. And, as I said above, road maintenance is a small fraction of what a fair road rent would be.
> Plus, bike lanes and sidewalks are a government owned & run part of many roadworks, so it's not just paying car owners that are served, so if anything the fuel tax payers are subsidizing this benefit to bicyclists and pedestrians.
If there is a benefit. Too often a useless cycle lane is put in as a fig leaf for a road scheme. (And I think the useful cycling schemes are usually local council funded rather than highways funded?)
But sure. Cycle lanes are a subsidy to cyclists, pavements are a subsidy to pavement users, and we should absolutely consider whether there are more valuable uses for any land we want to devote to such. I think we're all too eager (particularly in Britain) to treat certain land uses as sacrosanct, particularly with so many people struggling to find houses to live in, and as well as closing roads we should be more willing to cut off a walking or cycling path when that's necessary.
