In a few European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you pay a yearly tax for each car that you own that is meant to fund road maintenance/development. This is about 350 USD in Germany.
At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
And a new option is automatic tolls, where you don't even stop. They just take a picture of the car with license plate and send you the accumulated bill to your home (e.g. Portugal). Personally my preferred option is the German approach where you know that this is a fixed price. Paying by usage ends up being abused, in Portugal they leased the highways to privates that now hiked up the prices like crazy since it is basically a monopoly (no other road to reach your destination).
>At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
JFYI in Italy you pay BOTH a "fixed tax" (which is function of the horsepower of the car engine) AND most highways have tolls.
You pay with the fixed tax the "general maintenance and development" of ALL roads (excluded toll highways) and you pay the toll on a per use basis, as highways are largely "private" (technically they are public but object of concession/grant to privates).
Thanks for the detail about the road taxes in Italy. I had to stop so often on the road headed towards Milan to pay tolls every couple of kilometres and you still have to pay an yearly cost as resident, great.
Normally on highways in Italy you take a ticket when enterng the highway and pay when you exit, the toll boxes every few kilometres is something that was removed everywhere in the 70's (though I cannot exclude that a specific road somewhere in Italy still has them).
In the US, everyone of these options is used in various ways. You have to take into account though that some of this is done by the individual states, some is Federal, and some is local or even public/private partnerships. There is no single countrywide solution that can solve something like highway maintenance on a country the size of the US.
In Florida we have a huge toll system with the majority of it under an RFID like 'pass' you stick under your window. Tolls are ran by the state, largely on busy state roads in larger metro areas. I'm a pretty big fan, largely because it contributes to our lack of a state income tax.
My mind immediately went to the privacy implications of that. But then, you are in public on a public road so maybe tracking cars isn't such a big deal.
At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
And a new option is automatic tolls, where you don't even stop. They just take a picture of the car with license plate and send you the accumulated bill to your home (e.g. Portugal). Personally my preferred option is the German approach where you know that this is a fixed price. Paying by usage ends up being abused, in Portugal they leased the highways to privates that now hiked up the prices like crazy since it is basically a monopoly (no other road to reach your destination).