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It goes both ways..
People in rural areas have to pay for beltways, bridges, tunnels, stadiums, subways, security and police in the populated areas too..

I say this as someone from northern VA that pays for a very high percentage of services that that are used elsewhere in the state.
Including this massive road http://www.roadstothefuture.com/US29-Lynchburg-Madison-Heights.html in a sparcely populated area while here in congested northern VA we can not "afford" to build any roads or improvements without selling out to companies to make for profits on HOT lanes.

I've driven 95 from NY to Boston, from NY to DC, many times.

Yes, but driving through DC originally would not have taken you around on the Beltway:

If I-95 had been completed according to the original plans, it would have continued from the Center Leg to north of New York Avenue, and it would have junctioned the North Leg of the Inner Loop, turned east, and followed the North Leg, which would have paralleled the New York Avenue corridor, about a block to the north of it. At the B&O Railroad corridor (today's CSX Transportation), I-95 would have turned northward as the North Central Freeway, following the railroad corridor to beyond the Brookland area, being tunneled (cut and cover) for 3/4 mile from south of Rhode Island Avenue to north of Michigan Avenue, then leaving the railroad corridor at Fort Totten Park, heading northeast into Maryland as the Northeast Freeway, passing west of Hyattsville and College Park before junctioning I-495 at the I-95/I-495 interchange that was completed in 1971.

Where I-95 joins the Washington Beltway on the north side of town there is this odd interchange with a lot of empty space, that is where I-95 would have continued in to the city.

Doing a lot of studying on the nature of the IHS and such, I've discovered this mostly applies to a lot of areas _except_ the DC Beltway (a.k.a., Suicide Circle). It is, quite frankly, a brain dead design as far as interstates go. I-95 was supposed to go through DC, but for some reason (political, I think), that idea was cancelled and I-95, for a time, became the eastern portion of the beltway. It was later re-labelled to the dual scheme of I-95 and I-495. The end result of this is that all your freight traffic has to go around the eastern portion and over the crumbling Wilson Bridge (Although they just opened up the outer loop span and traffic will soon be switched off the old bridge).

Also left out was the DC inner loop system, which would have included an I-266, I-695, I-595, all tying together the converging interstates of I-95, I-66, and I-70. Although one wonders whether this would have helped or hindered the current layout gven the volume of traffic that passes through...

Tons of info on the DC/VA/MD road area can be found at Scott Kozel's Roads to the Future site, as well as tons of info on the various 3-digit interstates (including little-known things like the hidden I-595 in MD and the nature of I-238 in CA) at Kurumi.com

You transit nutcases are completely off your rocker. 90% of US roadway expenses are paid for by user fees. The other 10% comes from local taxes.

Nobody wants to ride in trains here. Why spend all that time cooped up when you can have total freedom on the road? If you're in a rush you can take a plane. We use our railways for freight here, not passengers, and the amount of freight we move around on rail per ton/mile is higher than any other country in the world.

Baltimore has a subway, you could have it a lot worse!

http://www.roadstothefuture.com/Baltimore_Metro.ht ml

But your point still stands, the USA is too car-centric and car-dependent.

The US pays for 90% of it's roads with user fees you twit. Just like BBC, the Guardian, et. al you limey fucks spout off urban legends, assumptions, and other BS and try to pass it off as fact. This must be why you have the worst journalistic standards in the free world.

Besides as so many people in the US drive, drivers can hardly be said to be subsidized. More like the other way around.

Actually roads are hardly subsidized...

90% of roads are paid for by "user fees". The rest is paid for by gas taxes.

Nonsense.

About 90% of road fees are paid for by direct user fees.The remaining 10% is local roads as the article says.

Actually railroads still haul quite a bit, although most people don't realize it. Actually, US railroads haul more freight than any other country by weight (by cost trucking does win out). Incidentally, I believe that for non-amtrak rail lines, maintenance is almost completely provided by the private companies that own them (which is actually a problem cause they don't spend enough).

Don't worry, they're not going to pave over America, road building is something like 5% of what it was 30 years ago. As a matter of fact, that aspect is probably causing more pollution.

But I digress. Now that I think about it, I would have no problem with a government funded internet infrastructure as long as it's paid for by user fees. I would add as a warning that the government rarely does things like this right, however, but as long as i'm not paying for it, i'm ok. Yes the government builds roads, but it doesn't really do that right, anyway.

Incidentally your local community or state may subsidize car owners. If that's true, yeah that's wrong, you shouldn't have to pay for it. So go campaign for lower sales or income taxes then.