You’re right, the individual states should take over the land and take care of it.
But the Fed’s will have none of that!
Nationwide the Fed’s have gone crazy the last couple of years closing public land to public access... and it has very little to do with anything but control. They still allow loggers to open those roads up to log, but you sure can’t go in there to recreate in any form but walking.
I’ve been in National Forests in about 20-30 states in the last two years... and everywhere the Fed’s have gone crazy.
If they even bother to hold the required public hearings, they just ignore the public anyway. They have an agenda, and to hell with the public! They are going to do what they want to do....
In Idaho this past summer I wanted to travel this nice gravel road over the mountains to Montana... but the Fed’s closed it 2 years ago to ‘improve the bear habitat’! That road was still listed on the National Forest maps for the area, and they hadn’t gotten around to publish the REQUIRED MVUM (motorized vehicle usage maps) for that area... even though they were required to do so by a 2006 lawsuit. They claimed they didn’t have the funds to publish the maps, but they did have the funds to close the road... sheesh!
So while I understand that you don’t want to pay to maintain roads in another state, the people in that other state are NOT being afforded the opportunity to take over that road themselves.
And we all are being required to pay to maintain roads in other states... mostly by federal gas taxes, but also with general taxes. For example, the Interstate highway system - which was built by the Feds to be military roads - and they being ‘military’ roads is how they imposed them on the states.
YEP the feds fight like hell to maintain control over the land they have and are always looking to take more land where they can. Can you imagine if they put that kind of effort into controlling the border, their actual job?