Transportation After the Age of Expansion | Strong Towns

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January 5, 2026

Transportation After the Age of Expansion

The era of transportation expansion was a success. That’s exactly why it needs to end.

Charles Marohn

Columbus, Ohio. Photo by Walter Martin on Unsplash.

Highways

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America is trying to do a lot at once.<br>We want to reshore manufacturing and rebuild domestic supply chains. We want to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy while dramatically expanding the amount of power we generate and distribute. We want more housing, more data centers, more resilience, and more economic opportunity in places that have been left behind. We want to tame inflation without stalling growth. And we want all of this to happen quickly.<br>None of these goals are unreasonable. In fact, taken individually, most enjoy broad political support. But together they point to a question we rarely stop to ask: Do we actually have the capacity to do all of this at the same time?<br>For much of the postwar era, the answer was yes. The United States operated in a world of relative abundance. Abundant labor, abundant materials, abundant energy, and a federal government capable of mobilizing all three at enormous scale. In that context, big national projects made more sense. They weren’t just investments; they were organizing principles for economic expansion. But that context has changed. Labor is now scarce. Skilled workers are in short supply across multiple sectors. Materials costs remain volatile. Training pipelines are long. Inflation has reminded us — quite forcefully — that resources are not infinite and tradeoffs are real. We no longer live in an economy where every good idea can be pursued simultaneously without consequence.<br>And yet, many of our largest federal programs continue to operate as if that earlier era never ended. Nowhere is this more evident than in transportation.<br>For nearly a century, the federal government has played a dominant role in building out America’s transportation system. Highways, interchanges, frontage roads, arterial networks, commuter transit systems, and more were constructed in the name of mobility, safety, economic development, and national cohesion. For much of that period, this approach fit the economic and demographic realities of the time, connecting markets, enabling suburban development, and supporting large increases in economic activity.<br>It’s important to say this plainly: the core objective of that effort was largely achieved.<br>The United States today has one of the most extensive roadway networks in the world. We are not short on highways. We are not short on interchanges. We are not lacking physical connections between major metropolitan regions. If the original goal of the federal transportation program was to build a national network, that goal has long been met.<br>But success carries consequences when it goes unacknowledged. When a mission is accomplished but the program continues unchanged, the logic quietly flips. What was once nation-building becomes obligation-building. What was once expansion becomes upkeep. And every new addition increases the long-term burden on systems that are already straining.<br>This is the paradox of modern transportation policy: even as states and cities struggle to maintain the vast systems they already have, federal incentives continue to prioritize expansion. We keep adding lane-miles to networks we can’t afford to care for, while telling ourselves that the next project will finally deliver the returns the last one didn’t.<br>That alone should give us pause. But it’s only the starting point.<br>Because maintenance challenges, as serious as they are, are not the most pressing constraint we face. The deeper issue – the one that forces a reckoning – is that the resources required to keep expanding our transportation system are the very same resources we now need for almost everything else we say is a national priority.<br>Scarcity Changes the Math<br>For most of the last century, transportation expansion had something else working in its favor: people.<br>The United States had a large and growing workforce, including millions of workers whose skills aligned naturally with large-scale construction and heavy industry. When the federal government funded highways and interchanges, it wasn’t competing intensely with other sectors for labor. In many cases, it was absorbing excess capacity. That is no longer true.<br>Today, labor is one of the tightest constraints in the American economy. Employers across multiple sectors report difficulty hiring, not because demand is weak, but because workers are scarce. This is especially true in the kinds of hands-on, skilled roles required to build things: welders, electricians, equipment operators, mechanics, technicians, and tradespeople...