But it serves a very small portion of the population.

While I agree with the basic premise that the government, using taxes, should pay for roads, I don't agree that special-purpose roadways should be done that way. Further, I don't think that a specific sales tax should be used to bail out a private firm because they couldn't manage the job. They should have been allowed to go out of business. Someone else would have picked up the pieces without taxing everyone, including me, who's never used the thing, and isn't likely to do so. For me, it's like the "bridge to nowhere" that they want to build in Alaska.

I do think the gov should pay for roadways and bridges, but I also believe that highway taxes should be assessed on the basis of the factorial of the square of the GVW rather than linearly as it is now.

A passenger sedan does essentially nothing to, say, south SantaFe drive, so, when it's resurfaced at considerable cost, it would easily handle a virtually infinite number of them, while ONE semi-load of gravel hauled from out west of Chatfield will damage the roadway forever. That gravel has been the cause of resurfacing south SantaFe drive at a cost exceeding the combined value of the gravel and the trucks, every two-to-three years for the past decade and a half.

RE