Jesus Christ dude.

First of all, I’m american, I’m a woman, and just look at our highway system. Black neighborhoods were bulldozed and paved over with highway interchanges. Cities were destroyed and continue to suffer from their existence. St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, Cleveland, Chicago, etc., etc., didn’t happen because suburbs ‘won’ in the free market of infrastructure or something.

Remember 8 mile, that road you don’t go past in Detroit? Hmm yeah I wonder how that happened if bridges/crosswalks are such a good replacement for infrastructure that doesn’t require those things in the first place. Infrastructure can facilitate national movement but it can also stand locally as an impenetrable wall. Put as many expensive “gateways” up as you want, it’s still a fucking wall. There’s a reason rivers are used as division lines between cities, states, and countries.

Do you really think there’s going to be a perfect route through ALL of that land and that avoiding population centers wouldn’t negate its usefulness?

Edit: also “underutilized” is an insane term to use for land. Just because humans aren’t utilizing it, doesn’t mean that land is devoid of use by other life. There is an entire ecosystem across this country that shouldn’t be disturbed if we can help it, much less a river be built through it. I mean come on, we have a mass extinction event going on right now, all the way down to the fucking insects that splatter on our windshields.