Pfft with all that tax-subsidized rent to be made? They love it.

In 2020 the US state and local governments spent $116 billion for the construction of roads and highways and $94 billion of operating costs.

If you just cancel half of the road construction projects of the year you get more than enough money to fund the connection of the 4 cities you described.

Source:Highway and Road Expenditures

Pretty sure the interstate highway system isn't terribly practical either, but with enough funding it can be done. Maybe saying every major city would make it seem more practical.

The total cost for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was $8 Trillion over 20 years This country has the money it just doesn't the leadership that wants to change. And why would they want to change? The way this country runs work$ well for them.

France's public infrastructure construction industry is one of the most corrupt and wasteful systems on earth 😂

Drive past any road or rail project, astonishingly, every single excavator or dump truck is brand spanking new, every year

In 2020 the US state and local governments spent $116 billion for the construction of roads and highways and $94 billion of operating costs.

If you just cancel half of the road construction projects by a year you get enough money to fund the connection of the 4 cities you described.

Trains you can park cars on. Would be great for camping weekends where I need all of my gear but don't want to drive for hours.

Yeah light rail, bike lanes, and walking roads. We can build a constructed environment designed around human beings. A world that’s good for our health, both physical and mental, and for our planet. All we need to do is accept a reality that cars aren’t a good use of resources and that walking and biking are really good for us.

Not that there isn't a lot of room for improvement, but while I can't say I've been to every major city in the US, I've never had a major issue getting around once I'm inside the city. Even if things are spread out a bit, there's sidewalks and crosswalks, which is all I personally need to consider an area walkable. And public transportation will usually get you to different areas of the city even if you may still have to walk a bit when you get off.

Admittedly I'm probably more willing to walk around than the average person, and not everyone is capable of walking that much, so like I said, still lots of room for improvement.

My biggest issue tends to be getting into the city in the first place, or getting from one city to another. From my home in the suburbs I can drive to pretty much anywhere in my nearest city in about an hour or less as long as I can avoid any major traffic jams. If I try to take public transportation though, im looking at an hour walk before I get to somewhere I can catch a bus (which only comes a handful of times a day,) and then a couple more hours before I get where I'm going, probably having to transfer to a different bus or train at least once along the way. If I drive a half hour or so to a train station then I can get right to downtown pretty easily, but the train only comes about every hour so if I don't time it right and miss the train it's significantly faster for me to just drive the rest of the way than wait for another train. Then they mostly stop coming at about 11pm, which means if I'm going into the city for a concert or something, I'm cutting it close and may not be able to get back home on public transit.

And if I'm trying to get to another city, I'm pretty much SOL. I'm basically at the halfway point between that major city and 2 smaller cities, and there is no transit options to get to those 2 other cities from where I am.

E-scooters, e-bikes or regular bikes if you want to go cheap.

A majority of Canada's population lives in a straight line from Toronto to Québec, but they can't even manage that.

There are ways. Maybe bring our number of aircraft carriers down to only 3x the rest of the world combined instead of 5x, just as an example.

Property acquisition in the US more expensive than in Europe? I think not, at least for the immense swaths of land that make up most of the US' land mass.

The legal fees I see, but that's why most developed nations have legislature for disowning property owners of land necessary for infrastructure at a set compensation. Whether that's fair or just is up for ideological debate, I'm sure.

The problem with only panels and wind is the fluctuation. We need at least a small "baseline" power supply that works when there is no wind at night. Storing large amounts of energy is the missing piece here to get rid of conventional power plants altogether. We'll get there eventually.