US history shows spending on infrastructure doesn't always end well

https://theconversation.com/us-history-shows-spending-on-infrastructure-doesnt-always-end-well-165653?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io&PostID=35581597&MessageRunDetailID= [login to see]
Quotes:
They (citizens) should ask who – particularly which corporations and developers – are going to benefit from these projects. They should look beyond the price tag to the social and environmental costs

People tend to disregard the long-term costs of the plans they make, particularly if they reap the benefits and others pay the costs.

The money invested in roads, railroads, airports and dams cannot be repurposed, and what is built requires large future expenditures for upkeep. If the infrastructure isn’t needed, then we throw good money after bad.

Railroads dominated the 19th century, but the U.S. built too many of them, particularly into the lightly populated West. I spent a whole book discussing the many ways in which that work, lauded now as a great success of government funding for private infrastructure, was in fact a costly and wasteful failure