You don't need 11 lane highways to supply the supermarket. Every multi lane road you encounter is built for private drivers, not for deliveries.

Our rail systems are crumbling for a reason.

It is much better to ship by train than truck. If we put this money toward revitalizing and expanding our rail in this country it would have a way better ROI.

The point being made isnt that roads aren't worth the investment, its more so that everyone pays for roads regardless of the amount of use they get out of them, but that same investment into cycling paths, bus lanes, or trains is viewed as "government subsidies" or "wasting money on infrastructure that won't be used by drivers".

Sure but that truck can pay the taxes which then get passed down to the consumer buying the goods.

We should be paying for the trucks to use the roads when we buy products transported on the roads. Just like how we pay for the ships, ports, trains, and railroads used to transport other goods. The cost of transport should be part of the total product cost. Trucks should be paying road tax in proportion to the damage they do to the roads, and those costs should be passed to their customers, then to us. This is how it works with most other forms of transport.

By moving the cost of the roads used by trucks to "everyone", it makes trucking artificially cheaper and turns the cost of roads into an externality. If shippers had to pay those costs directly, I bet there would be many more goods shipped in more efficient ways.

And those trucks will collect taxes through fuel, licensing, etc. And that cost gets passed down to the consumer. There's no reason to subsidise roads for that.

almost every single country used to have like 2x as dense rail networks, there's no reason we couldn't go further and make rail networks 4x as dense as they are now.