Roads in cities are such a waste of space. A long time ago I did a quick survey of SF and found something like 20% of the land was dedicated to cars. Some articles from people here that talk about this [1] [2] [3]. That is the most subsidized land on the planet but people don't think of it that way. They think roads are free so any tax to use them is wrong. That space could be helping out the city in so many ways but instead it is just ugly pavement. Yes we need some roads, but cars driving in the heart of downtown as normal transit? It boggles my mind how dumb that is. Raise this tax until basically nobody is using the roads then rip most of them up except maintenance corridors and put that land to use.
[1] https://www.sfmta.com/press-releases/sfmta-completes-citywid...
[2]https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities...
[3] https://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/11/03/study-quantifies-how-u...