There's lots of history you can look at to see how this works. The same thing does get invented more than once, but sometimes there's different technologies that could each become dominant, and then there's a real first mover advantage.

In Russia, they don't really have highways. Everything is built around rail lines. In the Inca empire, they had highways, but highways with stairs because there was no widespread wheel usage (which itself might be down to limited available wagon pullers and rough terrain).