Hint: It’s more than you think:

In Chicago, for instance, reimagining those right-of-ways could open up nearly $8.3 billion in redevelopment potential within three miles of the Windy City’s epicenter; in Boston, it’s $16.3 billion.

And in both cities, the annualized household costs of maintaining infrastructure over its lifestyle and paying the costs of driving are north of $23,000 a year — a price so few residents are willing to actually pay that local governments are struggling to fill their potholes.

“What we typically hear in the press is that congestion costs us billions of dollars a year,” Kennedy adds. "But whatever the number might be, it’s usually a scare tactic that’s multiplied by the entire population. When you start breaking that number down per household or per capita, the number is actually not that big — and it’s dwarfed by the overall costs of having to own and operate several vehicles per household, as well as all the infrastructure to go with it.

“We need to get some numbers out there that [show] why our municipalities are effectively broke, why the roads are so bad, and why we have to continually cut services and raise taxes just to tread water as a municipality,” he continued.