[jmecklenborg]

The interstate highway system has nothing to do with the military. It was built as a toll-free network in order to send the railroads into bankruptcy, and it didn't take long, since the railroads were still heavily regulated by the ICC and so couldn't save/invest their "excess" profits. The Penn Central bankruptcy - the largest in U.S. history until Enron, occurred just 15 years after the highway bill passed, and years before the highway network was fully built-out.

This followed the NYC IND strategy - build a competitor to a monopoly, watch it die thanks to old debts that anticipated continued monopoly status, then buy up the wreckage for cheap.

Amtrak has been kept in a moribund state so that people think "passenger rail can't work in the United States because the distances are further than in Europe and Japan".