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Historically, the government has played an important role in facilitating the development of the nation's transport infrastructure.  Its involvement was predicated on the basis that the users would ultimately pay for the use of the infrastructure.  For the most part, that has been true, although the payment streams have not always been transparent, e.g. property taxes are used to pay for city streets and county roads, monies are transferred from the general fund to the highway trust fund (a relatively recent development), etc. Government facilitation of the development of transport infrastructure is appropriate, in my mind, as long as their is a reasonable probability that the taxpayers will get their money back.  This has been largely true in most instances, although there are minor exceptions.  Without government involvement, it is problematic whether private enterprise would have the capital to build it, although most of the electric grid in the United States was built by investor owned utilities.  The user should see the true cost of transport and should pay the fully allocated cost to use it, unless the transport is dubbed a utility, e.g. local transit systems, para-mobility vans, etc.  When subsidies enter the picture, the user does not understand the true cost.  Therefore, he is likely to chose a mode of transport that may not be the optimum solution for him and society. Case in point.  Americans drive personal vehicles that get about half the average mileage of personal vehicles in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc.  They do so because the full cost of driving does not show up at the pump.  So they don't see the consequence of their behavior and most psychologists agree that behavior is a function of its consequences. Ultimately, all transport should be funded throuogh user fees paid at the price point, e.g. pump, ticket counter, etc.  If society decides that lower economic people should access to any mode of transport, it can supplement their income directly to enable them to rent space on the mode of transport in question.  This, by-the-way, is how the electric utility industry functions.  If people cannot afford to pay their electric bills, in most states they can get help with them.  But the price of electricity at the transfer points, as well as the end user point, reflects its true cost.  It works reasonable well and is a good method for rationing electric energy, i.e. getting people to conserve its use.
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