The difference of course is that almost everyone uses or benefits from the economy of roads. Relatively very few people use trails and they use them for personal enjoyment.
You really can’t think of any ancillary benefits to the presence of accessible nature?
I feel like this sort of comment (from someone with 14k+ “karma” points) is a kind of DoS attack on their self-perceived opponents.
But nonetheless, here’s three benefits for all, regardless of usage:
- reduction in healthcare costs, both physical and mental
- increased tourism
- increased appreciation for environment which in turn loops back into this list from the top
Just focusing on health alone has wide ranging benefits. And if all you care about are tax revenues and GDP, a healthy, happy workforce goes quite a way to improving both.
I’m not going to list anymore because I got other things to do and think about. And this isn’t going to change your mind anyways.
I wonder if the parent to this comment is another "I don't use trails, so no one does!".
If you actually walk along a few trails on a regular cadence, it's clear that there are many different people - it's not just the same people every weekend.
The real difference is that people in cities pay huge amounts of tax to support the roads out to a relatively few houses in the country. Roads are the biggest outlay in every county I’ve lived in.
