You may have noticed a bizarre and totally inexcusable quirk of this country: Our "public" infrastructure and services are not, in fact, public. There is no recognized, absolute right to enter a public space or use a public service, and if you are permitted to do so, you may be charged fees, fares, and other expenses for something you've already been taxed to pay for. Even when it's not beyond the pale in the case of explicit privatization, the citizenry is still treated like customers rather than owners - outside entities who can be denied service at will and made to pay for the use of what they already own by virtue of citizenship. We need a sea change in philosophy in this country where people, beginning with activist progressives, start to recognize and vocally promote the fact that We the People - every single one of us - own these things, and our right to them is absolute and not legitimately subject to market forces.
Part of that change in mentality has to be understanding the fact that "public" does not merely mean government, but rather each and every citizen individually. The authorities of government in managing public services and property are legitimate only insofar as they recognize, enable, and promote the rights and access of each individual citizen, since otherwise government merely functions as a monopolistic private entity rather than a representative of all.
Let's deal with some of the more obvious examples where the meaning of "public" has been horribly corrupted:
1. Public Roads
If a private entity wishes to build a private road entirely on private property, then it would be legitimate for them to charge tolls or require user fees. However, roads built and maintained with public money, via taxes or publicly-issued debt, making use of public transit infrastructure and eminent domain, and that use the authority of government to impose resource-allocation decisions on everyone, belong to every citizen equally - meaning the managers of these roads don't get to charge tolls or fees for the public to use their own property.
One way that corrupt interests try to muddy the waters is with public/private partnerships, but there's a major problem with such mixtures under most circumstances: Whatever portion of the expenses are born by the private entity would simply come from charging the citizenry whatever the market would bear - meaning that the public portion of the investment had merely subsidized the fixed costs of the private, monetized portion rather than the other way around. That, in turn, means it was nothing more than a privatization scheme with no benefits to the public owners. This is not to say such partnerships are never justified - sometimes it is indeed in the public interest to subsidize the creation of a commercial infrastructure - but as far as roads are concerned, there is almost never a valid reason to involve public money in a road that will charge for use.
If more money is needed to build and maintain roads and related infrastructure than is currently available with present revenues, then revenue must be increased, and the overwhelming majority of the time the best way to do that is to raise taxes on those who can best afford it: Not try to privatize or marketize the use of public resources, which is basically an act of theft against users that imposes the greatest burdens on those least able to afford it.
Upshot: Public roads must be free to use and open to everyone.
2. Public Transportation
How exactly is public transit "public" if the people who use it have to pay for it? They already paid when their tax money built the roads and/or tracks, and in order to guarantee that people can use the roads they own, there must be publicly-provisioned transportation. Unfortunately, pretty much everywhere in America (as far as I know), "public" transit is not in fact provisioned - you must pay to use it, even in cities where you technically own the buses, trains, and the institutions that set the fares. What this means in practice, even without any kind of privatization, is that you're still being charged twice to use your own property, and the balance of funds is going into the hands of private construction and maintenance contractors. What's even worse is that because markets are inherently regressive, the expense of using "public" transit is much greater in relative terms for the people who need it most.
Now, not everyone who owns a given public bus can fit on that one public bus, so obviously a different economic mechanism than markets applies to public goods: Namely, queues - i.e., first-come, first-served. Only each individual citizen has a right to monetize their own access - i.e., if they were to sell their place in line to someone else, pay someone to hold their place, etc. Imposing a market externally on everyone is simply theft, and regressive theft at that.
Speaking of which, why in the hell do we not have public air transit? If we are not going to be serious about building high-speed rail, then at the very least we can provide a public air travel service. Our taxes and debt build airports, funded the aeronautical research that made these aircraft possible, run the FAA, and also track and manage air traffic. We may not be entitled to sip scotch in 1st class, but we are entitled to freely use (in both the sense of "unhindered" and "without charge") the infrastructure we own. In other words, there should be public airlines. It's not as if they would (or even could) be any less comfortable than the coach sections of private airliners, and we would at least no longer be charged at a markup for the "privilege" of being treated like sardines. Recognizing this, of course, means "No Fly Lists" are illegitimate, but if you seriously think someone is a terrorist, deport them, charge them with something, or accept the risk like a citizen of a free society.
Upshot: Public transit has to be free of charge, and access allocated only by the non-market economic mechanisms - queue, lottery, or command, or some combination thereof. Moreover, there needs to be public air travel. We built the air infrastructure, we own it, it's ours, and we each have an absolute right to use it. It should be practical to travel from one corner of this country to another without paying a single dime toward transit.
3. Public education
Most K-12 public school districts in America are in fact public because they are free and equally accessible, and that is something corrupt / right-wing interests have been enraged about since the system's inception. However, university education has been another story, with "public" universities still forcing students to pay tuition and related expenses like textbooks, then forcing them to pay interest on loans to pay that tuition. This is naked theft.
The citizenry builds and funds these institutions. We each have a right to an education at a public university, provided we meet academic admissions criteria - because if we didn't have that right, then such institutions wouldn't even have a right to exist, and that's not something the vast majority of people would agree with. Even those who don't meet academic criteria are entitled to some equally free pathway to get to that point, such as free community college.
Upshot: Every citizen has a right to a college education, and public colleges and universities have no right to charge students money to attend or force them to meet the inherent expenses of obtaining an education. We all own these institutions equally, and what they provide is every person's absolute right.
4. Public healthcare
Obviously healthcare in general is a human right, so on that basis alone it makes no sense to force anyone to pay for-profit companies for it. But when public health plans and hospitals charge patients money, that is beyond the pale - that would be like some plumber you hired to fix the pipes in your house demanding that you pay them rent to use your own plumbing.
Upshot: No one should ever be charged for healthcare under a public insurance plan and/or at a public hospital. It's simply a right, and government is obligated to provide it free of charge and as free of obstacles as humanly possible.
5. Public facilities/institutions
Obviously there are facilities and institutions whose functioning requires restricted access - for instance, not everyone has a right to enter every area of a military base even though they technically own it. But facilities and institutions that are designed to be of direct service to the public must be equally and freely available. For instance, the right to seek redress of grievances in court, the right to legal representation in a criminal proceeding, the right to petition the government, etc. Fees charged for these functions are patently illegitimate, even if done on a sliding scale. These things are absolute rights, and you don't get to charge people for seeking what they are entitled to have. It is rather the obligation of government to raise revenues according to the needs of providing these services freely. And, obviously, people have an absolute right to protest at these facilities in such a way that does not hinder their operation.
Upshot: No fees for access to courts, public defenders, petitions, records requests, document filings, etc. Common sense measures would keep this system from being abused with frivolous requests. No barriers to protest other than what is strictly necessary for a facility to operate.
6. Public parks
We all have an equal right to nature, especially when managed and maintained by government agencies. They don't get to make us pay once for nature through taxes and debt, then pay again with "wilderness permits" that cost money, and certainly don't get to auction off the resources cultivated by the public to private entities. Blocking public access for scientific or wilderness management reasons is one thing, and fully legitimate, but monetizing publicly-managed nature is something else entirely. We own (or at least tend) the public wilderness, and we own the roads that go into them and the camp grounds where people park, so it's no more legitimate to introduce fees into that equation than in public transit or anything else. Let private property owners who own wilderness land charge fees and pull that crap.
Upshot: Publicly-managed nature must be free of charge and open to all.
7. Public land
Unless it's designated for some specific use that has a legitimate reason to exclude people, or unless it prevents others from using it, everyone has a right to go on public land whenever they feel like it and do whatever law-abiding activity they want at their own risk. "Exclusion by default," or selective exclusion of particular groups of people - e.g., the homeless - is nothing but theft. Unfortunately, it's the standard approach to public land. If the agency in charge of it has not designated it as a park, you are simply not allowed to go there, or if you are, you're not allowed to stay ("loitering") or else your activities are rigidly controlled. You are "trespassing" on your own land. Whole swaths of this country, especially in the Western half, are simply off-limits to anyone other than government employees or would-be developers looking to privatize public land. That's not right.
Upshot: This land is my land, this land is your land...literally.
8. Public information
Where to begin? First of all, no charging fees - let alone per-page prices - for Freedom of Information Act Requests. Impose queue rules so that people can't abuse the system to tie up public resources, but no one should fail to have the practical ability to receive information that they own because they don't have enough money. Secondly, no classifying information that's already public, enforcing classifications of information that have become public, or classifying anything that has no strong, direct, and legal national security justification to be classified. No redacting non-classified, non-confidential information from documents provided under records requests.
Upshot: We as citizens already paid to generate this information, paid to store and archive it, and own both it and the institutions that manage it. It belongs to all of us. Tell us what we want to know.
9. Public domain
There is a weird definition of "public domain" in this country where the fruits of publicly-funded research can be snatched up by private entities and made into private property - basically a libertarian system. The way it works is basically like if an individual were to plant crops on public land and then refuse to share the produce - a form of privatization. A real, rigorous, and legitimate Public Domain would involve proprietary patents and copyrights held by the public but universally licensed with the understanding that some share of proceeds from all derivative commercial works would contribute to this Public Domain and ultimately enter it. All non-commercial applications and derivatives would be completely free of obligation, other than also ultimately entering the Public Domain and carrying PD downstream to secondary, tertiary, etc. derivatives.
Upshot: Ultimately a Public Domain like this would encompass everything, and socialize intellectual property without in any way limiting or dis-incentivizing people's creative freedom.
3:17 PM PT: I'm a little shocked and dismayed by how many commenters have swallowed the libertarian/Randian Koolaid and think people should pay directly to use public goods.