Interestingly, there's nothing "rural" about bad engineering solutions. For example I live in a big city where they built an interstate spur that was essential

Interestingly, there's nothing "rural" about bad engineering solutions. For example I live in a big city where they built an interstate spur that was essentially unneeded in the 60s because nobody expected the cities to start decaying in the late 60s, so they demolished the unused spur a couple decades later when it was apparent the city was permanently blighted and would never grow in that direction. Insert a zillion "bridge to nowhere" stories here for a similar transportation infrastructure fail. Another big city story: A local hotel/condo development wanted the entire city to pay for a light rail system for bragging purposes. They got it. It connects to very little and very few people ride it, but paying off the politicians to get it was less expense than the marketing bragging increased the sales price. Admittedly this is a corruption story not a civ-eng transpo engineering failure. I mean, yeah, its sad whenever a "solution" makes things worse, but it's not specifically a rural problem. Reformers usually make money off making things worse, its a very old human story.