Highway spending increased by 90% in 2021. This is one of many reasons why car traffic is growing faster than population growth.
- No one is expecting someone in Montana, hours away from others to give up their car. Although incorporating more of the externalized costs might incent some people to make other decisions.
- There’s always something we can do better.
Even the most remote area has some sort of gathering points that can be concentrated into a walkable area. Basically - when you drive your car to church, you should have the option of walking to a brunch place and a grocery store, picking up your niece arriving on Greyhound, and yelling at your local councilman, before driving back. You should have the option to do more with fewer trips
You can also connect rural towns by cycling routes. Some parts of Australia are doing this by adding cycling tracks to long-abandoned rail links (would be nice if some of these were used as rail again but that’s another story). Yes, not everyone is going to be willing and able to use these but it’s great for tourism, and even getting a small amount of people out of their cars now and then is a win.
Here too. I was just reading about a town in western Maryland giving financial incentives for people who move there, and one of the things they mentioned was a rail trail connected into DC, 184 miles. I guess they were trying to say it’s a rural town but you can still get into a city
