> And its one of the best investments the government ever made. I don't think the experiment is over. The benefits of a highway-based society have been reaped

> And its one of the best investments the government ever made. I don't think the experiment is over. The benefits of a highway-based society have been reaped during a period of 1) cheap fossil fuel energy and 2) cheap land. Both of these are becoming more scarce which threatens to tip the ROI negative. Strongtowns.org has done some research that most American cities and suburbs will be facing insolvency in coming years because their revenue is insufficient to cover the costs of a road-based infrastructure (including water and power lines) that scales quadratically. To say that highways have been a good investment you would need to compare them with alternatives and examine their opportunity cost. A major problem with car transport is that it has worse scaling than most public transport: each household must personally invest in a car, garage, and fuel; private businesses must invest in parking, which drives up real estate prices; each car decreases the throughput of the roadway, requiring more roads to handle more cars--and when you run out of space for roadway then commute times increase. With most aspects of car transport you never get better than linear scaling. So the real question is: if you took all the money that has been spent on cars, roadways, fuel, repairs, etc. would it have been better spent on trains, buses, or some hybrid system?