From Newgeography, an interesting essay by Samuel Staley:
Will we be over-stimulated? asking the impertinent question of whether we should continue to invest in mature infrastructure.
My take is we need to rebuild and maintain what we have before we should start building to serve new markets, since we serve so many places that we now contemplate "bridges to nowhere" while real bridges age in place.
My take? The most important point is that rights-of-way are very hard to accumulate.
Maybe we shouldn't rebuild every decaying road or highway. But apart from really depopulated areas, every such route should have *something* built in it. Maybe some of them are better off as rail lines and some are better off as bikeways, walkways, and parks.
But the right-of-ways are so hard to assemble that we shouldn't waste them. We need to rebuild *something* in the place of the aging bridges, tunnels, etc., even if it isn't exactly what was there before.