Really? The public and elected officials never decided to build and open public streets that everyone has a right to travel on?

A republic isn't a place where every new decision and idea requires government approval -- that's a totalitarian dictatorship. A republic is where we elect people to set and enforce the rules for us and then we work within the rules absolutely any way we please to fulfill our own individual visions without asking permission from anyone.

In the past it was often assumed that most people would stay on major roads because only locals memorized chains of streets and even the people who planned routes (Thomas Brothers maps were a hallmark of the SoCal commuter, after all) would chain a few routes together but generally still kept it to what a human could remember since you couldn't safely read a map while driving.

Now that that has completely changed, it's probably true to say that the majority of local roads and traffic flows need to be reconsidered to see whether the signage or structure should change to enforce the way it was previously assumed they'd be used.