Book excerpt: Highway advocates often claim that roads 'pay for themselves, ' with gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists covering, or nearly covering, the full cost of highway construction and maintenance. They are wrong. Highways do not, and, except for brief periods in our nation's history, never have, paid for themselves through the taxes that highway advocates label 'user fees.' Yet highway advocates continue to suggest they do in an attempt to secure preferential access to scarce public resources and to shape how those resources are spent. To have a meaningful national debate over transportation policy, particularly at a time of tight public budgets, it is important to get past the myths and address the real, difficult choices America must make for the 21st century.