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Originally Posted by loquitur
A huge amount of public infrastructure is devoted to cars: highways, local roads, street lights, bridges, street parking, etc etc etc. Especially the free parking. Yes, there are public benefits to having a lot of this infrastructure, but that doesn't mean that cars aren't massively subsidized. The public cost of private cars, including the negative externalities, is enormous.
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Undoubtedly there is great expense, and I have always thought of infrastructure one of the few legitimate uses of government taxation.
I'm sure there are cases where such costs for automobile infrastructure were unjustified, much like many of the public works under the WPA, but for the most part it appears to me that such works are an acceptable expendature of the public coffers.
In Illinois it has long been an open secret that many road projects are nothing but political pork, but such offenses themselves need to be ferreted out for what they are.