☝️ This. It's why I put off signing up for Mastodon for a long time, even though I am a big supporter of the Fediverse.
Brightline has a solution for their planned LA to Vegas route. 96% of their planned high speed rail is in the I-15 highway median. (Source: https://www.brightlinewest.com/overview/project)
Yes, I know that won't work everywhere and there isn't always a highway median. I'm just pointing this out as one situation in which someone does have a (planned) solution to the problem of a highway already being there.
Also, we expand highways on a regular basis in the United States, and that often means demolishing things next to them. Perhaps there are alternative uses for that space?
"Safer than ever" is a hilarious claim given that cars have a much higher death rate than any form of public transportation:
Just to be devil's advocate, perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well. Isn't part of the point of all of this to avoid too much centralized control of social media?
Sure, Mastodon may never have as much mainstream appeal as BlueSky, but I use both. One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform. To interact with the masses on a platform that is more centralized, I use BlueSky.