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A moderate increase in user fees (gas taxes today, mileage fees in an electric future) could readily fund all capital and maintenance costs for the US interstate system. Gas wouldn't have to be that much more expensive than it was 4-5 years ago. The system would endure and could even be profitable.

No such fee structure could plausibly fund any rail system outside the NE Corridor. Prices adequate to sustain the network, let alone build it up, would put ridership into a death spiral.

> If the US didn't like government subsidies, we wouldn't have built all these highways

You can't disregard the history of the highways, or the reason they were first built - for the military in the name of national security.

Do you have a source on this? In my state the government used the tolls roads as a cash cow, they were massively profitable. The funny thing was the toll roads still sucked because they dumped all the money into the general fund to pay for everything else

Just like about a quarter of the motor-fuels tax that is supposed to go into the highway trust fund.