Governments should spend money on railways rather than roads. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Governments should spend money on railways rather than roads. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

There are wide spectrum opinions when it comes to governments’ choice to allocate funds on railways or roads. I believe that governments should invest its wealth on roads rather than railways.

On the one hand, building roads can help many residents to be lifted out of poverty. Roads provide farmers with more accesses to sell their products to cities because a great amount of farmland in the countryside can not be reached by railways. While many roads in the countryside have been abandoned for many years lying to the lack of money to repair them. Thus, mature agricultural products can not be delivered to cities in time due to the poor conditions of transportation, which has caused farmers there suffer a lot. If governments can contribute funds to repairing the roads, farmers will benefit to a large extent. Furthermore, many merchants will be willing to go to the countryside to seek a business because of the good transportation. Once the connection between countryside and urban areas is built, citizens from both sides will become interdependent and thrive together.

On the other hand, the loss weighs out its gains if governments keep spending money on railways rather than roads. Recently, many railways have extended in all directions throughout the country, which has met the basic needs for dwellers to travel. In addition, with the improvement of living standard, more and more people own their private cars, which helps them to get to the places that railways can not reach. It may cause redundancy and the costs spent on the railway construction and maintenance will go up if funds were continuously invested in building new railways.

In conclusion, building roads have more advantages than railways because it can provide people with more accesses to some special areas and governments can also spend a relatively smaller number of its budgets and bring the maximum benefits to the public.