> Yes building roads encourages people to go places. That's the point.
Building roads encourages people to drive in their cars to places. The problem is that automobile infrastructure is woefully inefficient, expensive and doesn't scale.
If you want to create the ability for people to go to places, there's more efficient and cheaper ways to do this than building more roads. One of these methods is public transit.
For time efficiency, the implementation is far more of the problem than the actual idea of public transportation (i.e. Philly to Pittsburgh, or DC to Pittsburgh). For traveling distances of ~120-400 miles or so, I'd much rather take a train than drive if the implementation isn't terrible (anything between DC, Philly, and NYC, Barcelona to Madrid, Florence to Rome), largely because the time isn't wasted (I can read a book, do some work, or take a nap).
I'm curious how things are going to pan out over the next 20 years, however, as some of these advantages held by not being responsible for piloting the vehicle become available to cars, and how different transportation methods are going to evolve around this. Rail has nasty failure modes due to the inherent sparse graph.
Used to be a fairly quick way to get around, but since 9/11 the unpredictable security delays and increasingly cramped seating have made it far less tenable. Even a 1 hour flight involves a ~45 minute trip to the airport - including time to park and walk to the terminal; a 2+ hour wait through security because it could take three quarters of that; the hour flight itself; time to disembark at the terminal - bare minimum we are talking a solid 4 hours which could easily turn into 5+ with a not-infrequent delay. You are no longer much ahead of the curve for an equivalent drive of less than 350 miles, at the end of which you would have a car. The expense of flying is prohibitive, and I can't even open my work laptop in the plane because it's a behemoth.
Yup. I would much rather take a 4-6 hour train to a city here in the Northeast US, even if the flight is a quick one-hour jaunt - which comes with an hour-long ride to the airport, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour (or more) dealing with security, and crappy expensive internet in-flight while my knees are jammed up against my chin. (Unless the person in front of me decides to recline their seat, in which case I have to store them in my cheeks like a chipmunk.)
I live in Japan now and domestic flights here are amazing. Airlines recommend you buy your ticket 30 minute before departure and be at the airport 15 minutes before when they start boarding. There's never more than 2-3 people in line in front of you at security. There are no liquid regulations - they have a sniffer for drink bottles. Of course airports all have good public transport connections.
Building roads encourages people to drive in their cars to places. The problem is that automobile infrastructure is woefully inefficient, expensive and doesn't scale.
If you want to create the ability for people to go to places, there's more efficient and cheaper ways to do this than building more roads. One of these methods is public transit.