Canada

Highway tolls are good, Canada can’t afford to maintain all its roads as is.

Tolls that feed back into the province are great, but the 407 is a privately owned company, and they keep all (most) of the revenue from those tolls. They are also responsible for maintaining those roads.

We got so screwed by selling the 407.

Road maintenance is always at a massive detriment for any country, and you can never recuperate those costs, especially not when you're encouraging car use over other forms of transportation (like what Ford is doing).

This is why many of us are trying desperately to convince our government (and fellow citizens) to reduce car dependency.

This isn't so much about the tolls as it is Drug Fraud breaking yet another election promise.

As for the nation not spending enough on road/bridge infrastructure, if the feds had the balls to do the right thing (ie: tax the rich at pre-1970's levels) we wouldn't be in such rough shape.

Most of Ontario's roadway infrastructure is in a decline and has been for a while now. Think potholes, crumbling sidewalks, crumbling bridges, lack of roadway reworks for better traffic calming and pedestrian safety to reach "vision zero".

Its amazing how much car centric infrastructure costs to build and maintain. Its also heavily subsidised, because if you had to pay the "actual cost" to use a roadway it would be unaffordable. Not to mention the indirect costs, such as environmental costs and public heath and wellbeing.

There is a visible difference in how well maintained the tolled 407 is compared to other 400 series highways in terms of proper on/off ramps, concrete roadways, quick response times to debris clearing.

It is a shame the remaining "profits" (after maintainace costs) do not go into other infrastructure projects in Ontario, like schools, hospitals, and parks, but instead a private purse.