Yes. Roads are subsidized; the true cost of building and maintaining roads comes from general funds, not just from vehicle registrations and gas taxes (which of course Waymo doesn’t pay, being righteously electric).
So you pay Waymo, they pay a few hundred dollars a year per car in registration, and you benefit from billions of dollars a year in highway funds from both state and federal sources.
Good point about electric. Maybe a tax on tires would be more fair, but that would lead to some dangerous behavior.
Waymo and I pay a lot in state and federal taxes. Shouldn't that work out that we're paying for a shared resource we use even if the proportional accounting is not exact?
I’m not sure Waymo pays much in taxes. Do they?
But in any event, cars and roads are massively subsidized, such that drivers get far more than they pay for. See for instance: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59667
Roads are paid for out of the general fund, meaning that even those (few) who don’t use them pay for them, which I’d call a subsidy (as opposed to self-supporting). That’s not necessarily a bad thing; the same is true for many programs that support low-income people, and I think that’s great. But it’s still fair to call it a subsidy.