You kind of hit on the biggest problem with lack of public transit investments, and I don’t think you even realize it.
On I-66, they added an additional travel lane for 4 miles and it cost $85million. That’s more than $20million PER MILE. And it is only ONE travel lane, not an entire highway. And yet, we accept this as the norm, but god forbid we spend money on public transit. Everyone is up in arms on how our taxes are wasted only when it is public transit. I’m not saying that $1 million bus stop was money well spent, I honestly don’t know. But it still sounds like a better deal than $1 million for 264 feet of travel lane.
http://inside.transform66.org/about_the_project/i-66_eastbound_widening.asp
The US should really just directly employ regional workers to handle these projects. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in public construction projects, and the profit motive requires an inefficient use of tax dollars since we must pay a completely useless margin just so somebody can become richer for doing zero work.
We also need to stop expanding highways since additional lanes have been proven to not help congestion, and actually worsens it because it encourages more driving.
