The problem of the highway expansion is not damage done by the highway, or that the highway itself doesn't increase value for land far away: It's that the very

The problem of the highway expansion is not damage done by the highway, or that the highway itself doesn't increase value for land far away: It's that the very subsidized highway later gives us horribly inefficient land uses which don't pay for themselves. So yes, the widening of the highway makes the suburb more valuable, but the second effects make the city spend more resources on parking and makes the streets worse for anyone nearby. It's no picnic for the suburb either: A car-centric infrastructure basically bans anything else. That would be fine and all, if ultimately it produced more value than the alternatives. But look at the parking lots that were designed to never get completely full on black friday, back when it was actually a time where people did local shopping. Nowadays it's all wasted infrastructure, expensive to redevelop. If you thought that the commercial real estate office in dense cities was in trouble, don't look at the one in suburbs. So it isn't really the highway, but all the things that relying on the highway leads to.