I’m not certain that Trump intends to finance this infrastructure work with “traditional” federal spending. There have been comments that alluded to a lot of this work being funded privately or with other sorts of incentives of some type. I’m curious to see what he proposes.
Me too. The railroads were built by private companies where the government just issued land grants and rights of way.
It would be interesting if the same were offered to consortiums of freight trucking companies to build highways dedicated to freight. It is big trucks that do most of the damage to highways and removing that traffic would greatly reduce maintenance costs on passenger-vehicle only highways.
There is also a huge amount of federal lands in the western states that desperately need waterworks and power brought to them. If land grants were issued, other consortiums of businesses might bring water and power along with housing and industry and farming. I am really surprised by how high real estate costs have become in existing cities rather than new cities springing up. Like with a house, it is cheaper to build from scratch in the boonies than it is to extensively renovate and expand within an old city. It seems like building new cities with up to date sewers, power, telecom, and water systems would be more attractive.