[Lammy]

Agreed, but I would say that inducing demand is the point of building anything. Nobody uses that term when it comes to building homes people want to live in. They only ever use it to oppose people being able to exercise their freedom of movement.

[wbl]

Very few people say roads help freedom of movement for others. They say it will help your commute, while higher capacity modes never get invested in.

[Lammy]

I said it. Seems pretty straightforward to me that I am inherently less free to move via rail/sea/air than via my automobile unless the train/boat/plane can also take me anywhere, at any time, 24 hours a day, any day. I do prefer to commute via train if I can. In fact my office just moved and I've had to give up my one-shot train commute just in this last month :/

Unfortunately the alternative to divesting in road infrastructure won't be investing in rail infrastructure, it will be telling people to stay home. For sure a lot of demand for rail investment will come once it becomes harder to get around and more people lose their autonomy, but the reality for many people will just become not going anywhere at all. That means segregation-with-extra-steps for all too many places, and I was raised to believe that's a bad thing. Peep the Bay Area for example — it's really bad! http://radicalcartography.net/bayarea.html

Aside: I'm a huge railfan and have actually gotten to drive a locomotive at the Western Pacific Railway Museum even though it was very expensive and confined to a tiny circle of track. Highly highly recommend a trip out there for anyone, even if just to sight-see the gorgeous Feather River Canyon: https://museum.wplives.org/ral/