It’s not a “politically constructed reality.” It’s a reality constructed reality. Roads offer a relatively cheap and easy way of taking advantage of cheap, plentiful land in the US. There’s definitely subsidies we could get rid of (force property taxes to cover the costs of roads in the suburbs), but even if you did that I suspect most people would still opt to live in cheaper and bigger houses outside the city. (Especially if you got rid of corresponding subsidies in cities.)
Interesting, can you leave the source where you determined we subsidize roads so people can move to wealthier neighborhoods? Because last I checked, we subsidize roads so big trucks can drive on them every day. If we didn't have trucks and buses, our roads would easily last 100 years.
The freeways were built in a time when you could realistically eminent-domain and bulldoze your way across the country. We no longer live in that time. Any project involving new rights of way is infeasible because property rights (especially property rights over land you don't own, but sits adjacent to your home) are so much stronger now.
Government is promoting cars, spread-out cities, and suburbia because they work so well and people love them so much.
Think about how much housing supply would go away if not for the road network.
Think about the bare-minimum transportation appliance car. With a private, enclosed space, air conditioning, a comfortable seat, and a radio, it's worlds better as a subjective experience than being inside even a relatively luxurious urban train during the commute rush. Now consider how many tens of thousands of dollars people happily spend on a level of comfort and quality far beyond the bare-minimum Craigslist special.
Democratic governments promote and invest in what their citizens like.
Desirable land is finite. Tax dollars are finite. Time is finite. Americans have spent generations and trillions of dollars building highways, roads, and parking to make driving really convenient. Every acre used for highways and parking is an acre that can’t be used for train stations, apartments, and fully grade separated bike roads.
Any discussion on reallocating some land or dollars to alternative transportation is immediately rejected by the car dependent majority. “Why should a portion of gasoline tax go toward public transportation?” “Bike lines increase traffic!” “The new development would change the neighborhood character!” “Add more lanes!”
The roads in new developments are built by the developers. I'm not sure these roads have much to do with deciding to drive to work or take the train.
Yes, its true that most interstates are rural. Of course that is true. I'm sure that its 95% rural. That's the nature of a network that connects all of the major cities in the country. And this 95% is probably a lot less relevant to whether you decide to live in the suburbs than the much more expensive part. Of course, your edit about the cost of the SF road acknowledges this very fact.
Its also true that in dense urban areas, interstate highways make up a fraction of the roads used for commuting.
Highways that must be put through existing neighborhoods are very expensive. And that's where highways to the suburbs had to be built. Usually by forcing other people from their homes. A lot of the true costs of building roads is hidden in pollution too.
The cost to build something is not the only cost. Roads have to be maintained, snow removed and potholes filled.
All I'm saying is that growth would be much more organic and justified if those getting the benefits of sprawl paid its costs as they went, instead of receiving a subsidy that distorts things.
Wheeled vehicles can go wherever we build roads... each road costs the taxpayer X / mile / year ... if we knew these costs we could make some rational decisions. The basic urbanism thesis posited by Charles Marohn and others, which I subscribe to, is that suburbs are not dense enough to maintain themselves (maintain roads, sewer, etc.) with the tax base
Yeah. Fundamentally, roads are really costly. The whole notion of designing a city around cars is horribly expensive and we keep pretending that's not the case.
What you seem to not understand is that the government has enough money to maintain the roads with out property tax entirely. It would force the government to be more efficient with their money and shrink the governement to just the essentials.
You think any for of US government operates on a shoestring budget? They are the most bloated entities on the earth. And its based off the backs of the poor and middle class.
Large networks of large roads are not financially sustainable [1]. I can only assume this is more the case the more rural you get. Asking for more of the current American style of car infrastructure may not even work, depending on the specifics.
Why should rural voters pay for a city's transport system? At least city people do drive the rural roads between cities. (though I will agree they are overbuilt - but rural residents would be happy with cheap gravel roads they can afford)
There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?"
Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway.
Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road network in the US was the best option?
Consumerism may be good for the economy, but I argue it's not in our best interest.
Sure, I love the freedom to drive fast anywhere but at what cost?
And who knows, maybe if we didn't have a central entity redistributing resources in an arbitrary way and shaping the market, some entrepreneur would have worked on flying cars and skipped the road altogether.
Care must be taken when evaluating those statistics because all the ones I've seen are done only in dollar terms and entirely discount the economic beneficiaries of the movement of people and goods.
For example, consider a paved rural road into farmland. In dollar terms paving that road is a subsidy from the nearest city to the people living in that rural area. However, in part the road is paved rather than gravel only to support heavier trucks to more efficiently transport agricultural products destined for the city. It is also paved in part to support larger, faster, heavier agricultural equipment which brings economies of scale to agriculture and reduces the per-unit price of the result -- again destined mostly for the city.
Residents themselves don't need the more expensive paved and it isn't their relatively light private vehicles causing most of the wear on the road in the first place.
Considered this way, a not insubstantial fraction of the cost of non-city areas is the city indirectly subsidizing itself. The full costs could be incorporated directly into the goods sourced from the supposedly subsidized areas, but that would be less efficient overall. For example, good roads reduces the cost of agricultural products for, say, three months a year. Instead of directly paying capital costs to pave the rural road the city could pay operational costs in higher food prices while missing the other cost advantages of the paved road the rest of the year in reduced recreational costs, policing costs, education costs, etc. If those other costs were higher there would be less of them and people would be less willing to live in those areas, increasing wage and commuting costs.
roads have been built by governments using tax revenue since history began
Some roads have been built by government... not all where, and not all are even now. I'll posit that a significant number of Americans drive on at least one private road every single day. Chances are, if you live in any kind of suburban housing subdivision, the road right in front of your house actually wasn't created, and isn't maintained, by the State.
There are, of course, other privately built roads:
Basically, the old (trite) saw that "I want roads, therefore we need government" is pretty much bullshit. Never mind the fact that one person's desire for a road hardly justifies their putting a gun in the face of everyone else around and demanding that they pay for said road.
Again.. we're hackers, we can do better. And I'm not saying I have all the answers, sitting here today. I'm saying that if we put our minds to it, we can come up with a way to achieve positive ends without resorting to violence. Why anybody on this thread would argue against that is hard to imagine? Are you people saying you like violence?
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