Every new transportation system in this country has been heavily molded by subsidies and laws designed to encourage it. (The same is true for telecommunications: laws depriving home and business owners of property rights allowed the construction of the network of phone poles on the easements the phone companies demanded.) Enormous tax breaks have been doled out to oil companies and investors for decades. (I say that as an investor owning thousand of shares of Enterprise Products, the biggest pipeline company based in the US [Enbridge is bigger, but is Canadian-based.] In addition to getting a very generous distribution, roughly 80& of my income stream is sheltered from dividend taxation thanks to my partnership tax deferral.)
My long-winded point is that a truly free market hasn’t existed in this country in the post-Civil War era.
Nothing new under the sun.
The trouble is, if the development of early transportation systems were subsidized, it was done to benefit the people of the country. The difference now is our tax dollars are being used to subsidize our enslavement.