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Notes -
By market I meant "the supermarket", not a market in the economy sense, sorry
Well, that's the main stated goal because 'people who do not shop or live or work here, but will after we do ' isn't a particularly valuable constituency for local politics, whereas 'people who live here and want driving to be easier is'. But ... imagine we expand the highways, but we track everyone who uses the highway & their frequency of use in the preceding months, and ban anyone from using the highway more frequently than they did in the past. This would ensure congestion is relieved. But seems dumb, precisely because 'existing people driving a bit faster' seems worse than 'more people using the highway'?
If all the transit-urbanism claims are true and that money should go into efficiently constructed subways instead, and if doing so would cause road use to be demanded so much less that current congestion dries up ... strong assumptions, but then yes, the current highway expansion would be pointless. But given that alternative isn't happening, and both lack of political will and existing dysfunction in construction in the US make it unlikely to happen soon. Whereas the highway expansion is happening. So outside of that, what better alternatives are there for that money, do you think?
It makes the question of 'should we stop handing out the truffle mushrooms'? And - if you're an individual who has that power, yes, you should simultaneously stop buying truffles and start buying rice. But given I don't have that power, I don't see how advocating against building the highway helps much - because if the highway stops, the existing (stronger) forces preventing better (i am assuming they are better for this discussion, haven't thought enough to be sure) forms of transit won't suddenly dissipate, we'll be arguably worse off, without expanded highways or better transit
Ok, the combined revenue (or profit) of the 2 markets is higher than of the single supermarket before. Yes, but this doesn't tell us anything. There is no corresponding value in the analogy, because the roads are free to use. There's also no way to know, in this case, what the correct number of roads actually is, because again there is no market (general definition).
A ban is dumb, but there should be congestion pricing. Keeping the highway uncongested is actually relatively valuable, because it increases throughput. But again, the real problem is that you will never build enough highways. It is impossible.
As the article I linked mentioned, the city recently passed a bond to fund more transit. But overall, I find this logic fairly circular, like when liberal groups use endless litigation to drive up the cost of the death penalty, and then try to have the death penalty banned because it's so expensive. Part of the reason transit is so expensive is because of people who want to build more roads instead. (For what it's worth, I don't think most US cities need a subway. Light rail is fine, and even in the US that compares pretty well in terms of cost per mile per passenger's worth of capacity).
The city is working on better transit, and either project will certainly take years, if not decades, to complete, and probably be subject to substantial opposition and delays. Overall it seems like your argument boils down to "building roads has more existing political support, so let's keep providing more political support to building more roads" which, again, seems circular.
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