In all seriousness, we can look at our American highway system like we look at buses at peak and off-peak times. When I board the 23 Bus in the morning, bound for Henrietta, NY in RTS’s system, I’m ususlly standing the whole way. The bus is packed with rush hour riders, even in my mid-sized, car-oriented city. Now, if I were to take this bus at off-peak times of the day, or take a route that’s not as popular, or if you were to look at statistics regarding riders per seats available, the ridership capacity statistics would be invariably lower.

But this is true for our highway systems as well, especially in rural areas. When we look at the incredibly excessive land use, build cost and annual roadway maintenance in comparison to the abysmal average daily traffic counts that they cater to, the reality of the often overlooked and “overbuilt infrastructure” comes clearly into focus.

For example, let’s look at Great Rochester’s I-490 expressway, a major highway that connects I-90 with Rochester and suburbs to the east and west of the city. As you move west of Rochester, traffic counts dwindle to a comparable trickle despite the fact that the infrastructure is tremendously excessive. The reality is that the 3.5 mile stretch between the 33A Bergen exit and the I-90 interchange handles approximately 12,000 cars per day.