Road Transportation
My personal opinion is that having roads and cars was a big mistake in human history. It seems to introduce more problems and issues than solutions. I’m sure that without roads and cars humans would come up with better solutions to transportation. For short-distance travel walking and biking works fine for many.
I feel like developing countries should come up with better solutions to transportation rather than just copying things done by Western countries like a hundred years ago.
I don’t get why so many people are encouraging developing countries to have better roads. China has good roads and now road accidents are a leading killer in China which is bad news especially for China since China’s birth rate is so low these traffic accident deaths only help in causing population decline in China (also bad for the economy).
Traffic accident deaths kill nearly 3 times more than wars and homicides combined every year.
The main Advantages Of Road Transportation Are:
Only widespread surface transportation network
Roads are currently the most scalable surface transportation network. Due to network effects, there is a huge advantage of just expanding the existing network.
Multiple vehicle types and purposes
Roads can be used by many independent, privately and publicly owned vehicles. Examples: personal cars, shared vehicles, bicycles, buses, and trucks. Roads support many sizes and purposes.
Leverages private investment
Roads leverage private investment in that private entities pay for the vehicles that operate on the road network.
Final Destination (or last mile)
Roads are currently the only widespread method to provide transportation to the final destination. Trolleys were another popular method in the past. Train stations are too far apart and train cars are too large to provide service to the final destination.
Scalable
Roads scale pretty well from single lane dirt roads to multiple lane highways. Congestion is a huge problem in many areas because it is usually difficult and costly to increase road capacity.
Leverages private investment
Roads leverage private investment in that private entities pay for the vehicles that operate on the road network.