Well, GP made a comment implying that it is inappropriate or unwise for governments to subsidize infrastructure used only by a certain sub-segment of the population. Conspicuously the list of things that GP wishes to be un-funded excluded roads, indicating that GP did not believe it improper for governments to be building roads with taxpayer revenue.

From where I sit, there are three possible reasons one might believe the above and still be okay with governments building roads.

1. Everyone uses roads.

2. Road users pay for road construction via gas & usage taxes.

3. Roads are important enough to subsidize, because all of us depend on goods delivered via roads and benefit by their economic activity.

Reason 1 is just too facile to worry about too much. Not everyone drives, especially in urban areas.

Reason 2 is extremely common, and extremely wrong. While gas taxes exist and do help pay for roads, they have never actually completely covered the cost of America's road network. While the exact percentage varies on a state by state basis, most states have less than 50% of their road costs covered directly by gas tax & usage fees. By 2010 only 34.4% of California's road costs were covered by said fees, the rest were provided by federal subsidy (presumably income & corporate tax based) and state/local taxes (income & sales ). Gas taxes have never covered the cost of roads, the highest they ever got was about 70% in the 1950s, and it appears that we're on a downward slide still.

Gas taxes are also extremely poorly structured ensure that those who do the most wear & tear to roads pay for them, see addendum.

Belief 3 is really tricky, because it encompasses the idea that infrastructure projects that one doesn't use directly might be worthwhile subsidizing for the economic benefits shared by all. It is very hard to hold the belief that "roads are worthwhile for the economic good, even if I don't drive on some of them specifically" while also believing that "public transit infrastructures are bad for me to subsidize because I will never use them". Put in this way, it is extremely incoherent to attack the existence of say, the NY subway, as worthless, ignoring the billions of dollars in economic activity that it helps facilitate.

Given these three options, it seems to me that belief 2 is the most probable. Hence my statement that the author would be pretty shocked if they were asked directly to bear the cost of their road use directly.

Addendum: While gas taxes might have utility in pricing in externalities of carbon production, they're god awful at distributing the cost of road wear and tear equitably. Gas taxes make the assumption that gas consumption is a good proxy of road use, which it is not. Roads experience wear and tear based on weather and the speed/weight of the vehicle. So a H2 (8,600lbs) appears to do roughly 21x the wear to the roads that a "standard" 4,000lb car does at the exact same speed. This produces some silly scenarios where a Fiat 124 (2,400lbs, 30mpg) would pay more in gas tax than a Prius Prime (3,300lb, 54mpg) on the same routes, despite the former doing much less damage all else being equal.

And that's not even getting into the issue of EVs which both pay no gas tax and are extremely heavy (~5,000lbs for a Tesla S or X).