But it is free.

I could get in my car and spend the rest of the day driving around. Admittedly I'd pay for gas but unless I hit one of the 2 tolls in the GVRD I wouldn't pay a cent.

Road pricing would/could be like the carbon tax. No one has stopped driving because gas costs an extra 6 cents per liter but the more gas costs in general the more people are incentivised to not use it. Or to find an alternative to using so much of it.

The ferries might be an even better example. If the trip from Vancouver to Victoria was “free” like the roads are free think of the line ups? If all you had to pay for was your time and the gas you’d consume getting to and from the ferry the ferry system would crumble under the load of free riders.

Instead there is a price to using the ferry so only people with a need equal to the price use it. I’m not saying it’s the right price it could be too high or too low. But that’s not the point.

Roads suffer from the same problem.

Think about it, if every single occupancy vehicle suddenly had two people sharing it I’d guess our traffic problems would disappear overnight. But carpooling sucks and is a pain in the ass so why would anyone do that? Well, if it cost some money to use the roads people would be incentivised to find some way of deferring that cost. That could be taking transit, or biking, or moving closer to work, or carpooling, or buying an electric scooter, or doing any number of things but none of those things will ever happen at this rate because you and your 2 million friends are all terrified of the idea of change.

All of us pay progressive income taxes, not just drivers. All of us subsidise roads, public transit, and drug injection sites regardless of if we use them or not. That’s kind of how society works.