The implication in this is that railroads don't already exist, which is simply false. In fact, nearly every town in the Midwest established before 1950 were built on a railroad line. A few notable examples are Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Birmingham, Chicago, St. Louis, and Portland Oregon. Moreover, many suburbs were formed around a streetcar line, which were later torn up to let cars drive there instead.
> maintenance is extremely cheap. It’s paid for with gasoline taxes
That is demonstrably false. Gas taxes as of 2011 do not cover road maintenance (at most it's RI with almost 80% and median of about 45% [1]). Furthermore, the federal gas tax (which is supposed to pay for the interstate system) hasn't been increased since 1993, and isn't indexed to inflation. The United States Highway Trust Fund has been relying on non-fuel tax revenue since 2008, and that doesn't look to be changing any time soon [2]. Of course, regardless of the actual costs of effective maintenance, you can make any public works project much cheaper by simply not maintaining it. If maintenance was actually "extremely cheap," then it stands to reason that the US would be getting more than a 'D' on roads [3]. Even after all of that, it still doesn't factor in the legal requirements for private expenditure on roads, such as minimum parking requirements and extensive R1 zoning. It also doesn't factor in the vast negative externalities of cars (yes, even electric cars).
> Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive
I'm going to ignore that you chose the MTA, a famously corrupt organization that is responsible for tunneling under the densest metro area in the country, as a baseline for the cost of rail. Instead I'm going to point out that car roads have nearly every bureaucratic advantage in the US, for a multitude of reasons. There is a lot of nuance to this, but for anything short of HSR, the expense in railroads is not engineering. If you're interested in a jumping off point for learning more here, check out [4].
> I'm going to ignore that you chose the MTA, a famously corrupt organization that is responsible for tunneling under the densest metro area in the country, as a baseline for the cost of rail.
The implication in this is that railroads don't already exist, which is simply false. In fact, nearly every town in the Midwest established before 1950 were built on a railroad line. A few notable examples are Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Birmingham, Chicago, St. Louis, and Portland Oregon. Moreover, many suburbs were formed around a streetcar line, which were later torn up to let cars drive there instead.
> maintenance is extremely cheap. It’s paid for with gasoline taxes
That is demonstrably false. Gas taxes as of 2011 do not cover road maintenance (at most it's RI with almost 80% and median of about 45% [1]). Furthermore, the federal gas tax (which is supposed to pay for the interstate system) hasn't been increased since 1993, and isn't indexed to inflation. The United States Highway Trust Fund has been relying on non-fuel tax revenue since 2008, and that doesn't look to be changing any time soon [2]. Of course, regardless of the actual costs of effective maintenance, you can make any public works project much cheaper by simply not maintaining it. If maintenance was actually "extremely cheap," then it stands to reason that the US would be getting more than a 'D' on roads [3]. Even after all of that, it still doesn't factor in the legal requirements for private expenditure on roads, such as minimum parking requirements and extensive R1 zoning. It also doesn't factor in the vast negative externalities of cars (yes, even electric cars).
> Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive
I'm going to ignore that you chose the MTA, a famously corrupt organization that is responsible for tunneling under the densest metro area in the country, as a baseline for the cost of rail. Instead I'm going to point out that car roads have nearly every bureaucratic advantage in the US, for a multitude of reasons. There is a lot of nuance to this, but for anything short of HSR, the expense in railroads is not engineering. If you're interested in a jumping off point for learning more here, check out [4].
[1]: https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-o...
[2]: https://www.enotrans.org/article/ten-years-of-highway-trust-...
[3]: https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads-infrastr... (The Infrastructure Report Card is published by the ASCE, which does have an incentive to create more work for civil engineers, so it's worth taking it with a grain of salt)
[4]: https://palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-cant-build/