This seems to be a recurring problem. We have all these subsidies and taxes that penalize or prioritize certain kinds of actions instead of charging everything at its true cost. This means the government is forcing a certain kind of solution to the problem rather than charging the problem makers the cost of their problem.
A better solution would be to charge all drivers the exact cost to run their cars including all road maintenance for the roads they use and the cost to the health system and environment that their cars create.
Then provide multiple options such as rail and bike lanes. People will naturally gravitate to the best solution.
I often see complaints about how this will raise the cost of products like food because they need a lot of road and fuel resources. But the thing is you already pay for this cost through other means. By charging the true cost the price of an apple may go up but the price in your tax goes down. And this way the seller of the apple is now incentivized to source the apple locally and reduce the transport costs because its no longer paid for by everyone.
This is very hard to implement; How do you amortize startup costs (building the roads, buying new paving trucks) vs maintenance costs (raw cement, human, cost @ year 1, cost @ year 10, cost to replace the system after X years).
Do you penalize users/tax payers who have a lower use
and less scaled systems? (e.g. should it cost more to mail my grandmother a letter because her post office is less at scale than mine?)
Do you increase the costs if some of your users leave (and risk even more attrition)?
This has been investigated in depth with schools and local businesses. Gov gives them a sweetheart deal with the hope that they contribute back and as the deal get's less good (and Gov starts ramping taxes to deal with paying infrastructure costs) businesses leave. For me the natural conclusion is the government has to provide some balancing (rain day funds, progressive taxes, ...)
A better solution would be to charge all drivers the exact cost to run their cars including all road maintenance for the roads they use and the cost to the health system and environment that their cars create.
Then provide multiple options such as rail and bike lanes. People will naturally gravitate to the best solution.
I often see complaints about how this will raise the cost of products like food because they need a lot of road and fuel resources. But the thing is you already pay for this cost through other means. By charging the true cost the price of an apple may go up but the price in your tax goes down. And this way the seller of the apple is now incentivized to source the apple locally and reduce the transport costs because its no longer paid for by everyone.