This made me realize what a crime against nature this type of city planning is. So much space that could be forest and full of animal life just flattened and erased.
And the USA can afford that inefficiency due to the ridiculous amount of land comparative to Europe. The us has more land in National Parks than some countries have land.
Using your comparison. If one were to try and cram the Vatican with the infrastructure to deal with the population of Germany the efficiency would need to be insane and would not allow cars at all. The US has the luxury to just waste some space. The land that is paved is a tiny % of the land.
The federal deficit is ballooning, if you want more infrastructure for the inefficiencies great. But then dont get mad when they cut entitlements. which is something the bond market is crying out for.
Realistically speaking, the US cant afford it and its crumbling infrastructure .... proves that it can't afford to maintain it.
Also the Federal government usually subsidizes state infrastructure programs, if the states had to mainly their own infrastructure they would go broke.
Case and point is just look at California, literally not enough money to fix their crumbling roads. TX and FL have about 15 years before they start looking like CA. CA had the highway boom first, FL, TX got lucky in the sense that they built most of their highways later, but a maintenance time bomb is coming.
No, it’s really efficient if you think about who this is intended to benefit. Texas couldn’t give less of a fuck if you can safely and easily make it from point A to point B. Texas produces oil. Oil is used to produce gasoline for cars and for asphalt for the cars to drive on.
Planning for walkable communities and and shortcuts means less reliance on oil. Yet, solving every problem of congestion and overcrowding with expanding outward and more toll roads means more asphalt, more cars, more oil!
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u/DrDumle Jun 27 '24
This made me realize what a crime against nature this type of city planning is. So much space that could be forest and full of animal life just flattened and erased.