An aerial view of the Interstate 4 and State Road 408 interchange in downtown Orlando.Paul Hennessy/ZUMA

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Roads, roads, and more roads. The US is continuing to spend billions of dollars on expanding enormous highways rather than fund public transport, with a landmark infrastructure bill lauded by Joe Biden only further accelerating the dominance of cars at the expense, critics say, of communities and the climate.

Since the passage of the enormous $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, hailed by Biden as a generational effort to upgrade the US’s crumbling bridges, roads, ports and public transit, money has overwhelmingly poured into the maintenance and widening of roads rather than improving the threadbare network of bus, rail and cycling options available to Americans, a new analysis has found.

Of reported funds dispersed to states, more than half—around $70 billion—have been spent on the resurfacing and expansion of highways, a process that researchers have consistently found only spurs greater use of cars and therefore more congestion. Just a fifth of the money has gone so far to public transit, with much of the remainder also facilitating more car driving, such as the refurbishment of bridges.

This spending is a “climate time bomb,” according to the new Transportation for America analysis, which calculates that more than 178 million tons........

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