1. Infrastructure is incredibly expensive in dense urban areas.
A road/rail tunnel can cost upwards of $100 million per mile (a few projects have run at close to $1 billion per mile).
Likewise buying back land to add an extra lane to a road can run into hundreds of millions of $$$.
Infrastructure like electricity is indeed more expensive for rural areas but often cheaper for low-medium density cities - overhead power lines are 5-10x cheaper than underground lines.
2. A lot of the subsidies for rural areas are actually to help businesses and farming and benefit the major cities.
E.g. Prices in our cities would increase enourmosly if we didn't have a good interstate highway system.
And gas subsidies mostly benefit trucking and farmers.
1. Infrastructure is incredibly expensive in dense urban areas.
A road/rail tunnel can cost upwards of $100 million per mile (a few projects have run at close to $1 billion per mile).
Likewise buying back land to add an extra lane to a road can run into hundreds of millions of $$$.
Infrastructure like electricity is indeed more expensive for rural areas but often cheaper for low-medium density cities - overhead power lines are 5-10x cheaper than underground lines.
2. A lot of the subsidies for rural areas are actually to help businesses and farming and benefit the major cities.
E.g. Prices in our cities would increase enourmosly if we didn't have a good interstate highway system.
And gas subsidies mostly benefit trucking and farmers.