That's likely to be closely related to the same dynamics that make maintenance funding so politically difficult. Big new projects are visible, whereas things li

That's likely to be closely related to the same dynamics that make maintenance funding so politically difficult. Big new projects are visible, whereas things like maintenance funding or less obvious improvements...aren't, and that difference in political impact can lead to serious agency problems. A politician accrues easy political capital with big, new projects because they're so obvious. Most articles and papers I've seen on the subject emphasize much more rigorous project-specific cost-benefit analyses. This 2016 CBO paper[0] covers both the history, current situation, and three potential reforms: charging for actual use, cost-benefit analysis, or carefully linking funding to performance metrics. This is a separate Brookings paper discussing the subject as well.[1] Viewing projects less in isolation and more as part of a connected complex system could be more readily captured in cost-benefit analyses, and be more resilient against perverse agency problems. 0. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50150-Federal_Highway_Spending-OneCol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-... 1. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_highway_infrastructure_kahn_levinson_paper.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_high...