But very useful in the places where you'd get stuck in a traffic jam.

The majority of people in the US live in urban and suburban areas. There’s plenty we can do in these areas to reduce car-dependency instead of paving more roadway (which ends up as waste of time due to induced demand).

I think you misunderstand induced demand. The increased demand when you add more capacity, simply means even more utilisation is achieved -> increased productivity. This is not a waste of time.

The correct comparison should be comparing for each area and situation, which type of transport investment results in the greatest utility. The objective is not to minimise traffic, but to maximise peoples ability to get where they need to be.

No, it just makes things farther apart, and more people sit in traffic jams. That's decreased productivity.

By that logic: How can you actually increase utility for trains if you don't build a train? If public transportation is eschewed in favor of more roadways, then unsurprisingly the utility of the roads increases.

But, many studies have shown that building more roads does not reduce congestion. Congestion is not function of roadway space-- other factors like accidents, merging, exiting, peak travel capacity, etc greatly impact congestion. Building another lane on a highway doesn't solve the problem.