[silotis]

"Public good" is a term of art in economics which means a good is both non-excludable (it is impractical to control who benefits from it) and non-rivalrous (one person benefiting does not prevent others from also benefiting).

Roads are clearly rivalrous and while it's often impractical to prevent non-payers from entering a toll road, one can certainly record them and met penalties after the fact to discourage it.

So no, roads are not a public good.

[JumpCrisscross]

> roads are not a public good

You’re both right. Roads can be an impure public good.

At low traffic loading, they are not rivalrous and can be modelled as a public good. At high traffic loading they become rivalrous and thus closer to a common-pool resource.

If roads are made excludable, they resemble a club or even private group.

[DangitBobby]

If roads are "rivalrous" then so is literally everything else.

[silotis]

Roads are rivalrous because too many people using them causes a traffic jam. Seriously go read the Wikipedia article on the subject.