Comment by analog31

In my locale, in the US, local roads are paid for by property taxes. The higher traffic state and Federal roads are paid for through a combination of fuel and income taxes. Cyclists tend to avoid those roads due to safety and distance. Cycles are prohibited on our equivalent of the motorways.

Most cyclists in the US also have cars, and are paying for license, registration, and insurance. Higher insurance rates are necessary because cars get in more crashes.

Meanwhile, bikes take up less space and do negligible damage to roads, and to other things like vehicles and stationary objects.

A more useful model is that we all pay to subsidize heavy trucking.

But also, each person paying for goodies that they don't use but someone else does, is kind of how a modern society works. It would be vastly more expensive to administer a society in which each person is charged a fee in precise proportion to the facilities and services that they use. Maybe in the future with AI.