Public Transit does too. Cutting up neighborhoods, noise, pollution all happen with busses and light rails. The externalities are almost identical in either case. (You can bury your light rail, but you could also bury your roads, etc).
> For these reasons, your internet and water-use analogies are inaccurate parallels.
That may be true, but I don't see how yet.
People oppose fiber lines all the time because "telephone poles look ugly" or "I don't want to be in the electromagnetic field" (even though there isn't one).
> People generally don't believe these wider roads will significantly lessen congestion.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for bad roads. I'm advocating for more roads, and there is a big difference. New freeways should be far above ground (so that there's no division of neighborhoods) or below grade, just like new public transit (usually) is.
I'm also not advocating for more strip-mall like roads. (4-8 lane at-grade streets typical near malls, WalMart, etc). There should be lots of big freeways, with lots of small exits to smaller urban streets (downtown) or smaller suburban streets.
A good example of this is the buried freeways near the Washington State Convention Center and Mercer Island - http://northwesturbanist.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/lets-bury-...
