Yeah in my area all the "cities" had heavy railway access, then trolleys were added and as the city expanded and suburbs grew every cow path was eventually paved for autos. Before the paving it was dirt roads. The trucking industry also provided a lot of push for major road production. What predates every single one of them was the canal system with locks. Remnants of the old canals can still be seen along a lot of the rivers and some areas have little parks where they preserve the locks for tourism. Talk about a lot of work both to build the system and to transport goods. Almost as soon as the canal system was established and running the steam locomotive came along and made the entire system obsolete.