They’re not charging toll. They’ve got an outdated funding model based on selling maps, and they’re sticking their head in the sand. But what are the other options? Go to the taxpayer? Put up advertising billboards on the trails?
Source? Because that Wikipedia page does not state that: no word about France, Italy and Spain, and just a little "freedom to roam" in UK and Germany.
In France, you can enter any open landscape and bivouac there, unless the owner directly states you cannot. The law also forbids to build anything too near to the sea, breaking access to the coast. Private beaches are forbidden. Isn't that more than in most neighbouring countries?
> Even in the US, our trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions.
It's the same in France: mostly unpaid helpers from associations and paid workers from municipalities.
This sentence is silly. France is smaller than Texas.
France has 2,000 miles of total coastline (before considering access); Alaska alone has over 6,600.
A more sane comparison would be share of coastline with public access, or maybe for some purposes per-capita public access coastline. But absolute miles of public access coastline is silly.
The original comment was "Nothing comparable exists in the US". Given that the entire West Coast and other key beach recreation states like North Carolina and Hawaii have stellar laws on public access, the root comment was simply not true.