Posted on 06/17/2006 2:54:43 PM PDT by SmithL
In signing the bill that created the nation's interstate highway system, Ike not only kick-started a nationwide freeway construction boom. He also fueled the country's then-burgeoning car culture, which helped drive family car vacations, suburban sprawl, long-distance commutes and frontage-road commercial districts laden with fast-food franchises and chain motels.
"It was no less than the rearrangement of the ways people live their lives,'' said Owen Gutfreund, director of the urban studies program at Barnard College in New York and author of "20th Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape."
"New communities have been born, communities have grown, central cities have died."
While Americans were taken with the automobile by the 1950s, and freeways were under construction in urban areas around the country, a much-discussed interstate network was not funded until Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Eisenhower eagerly signed it that year on June 29 in Walter Reed Hospital, where he was recovering from surgery after a bout of ileitis.
The act, which envisioned a 41,000-mile network of smooth, wide, fast and intersection-free superhighways from San Francisco to New York City, promised to reimburse states for 90 percent of the cost of building the new thoroughfares. It set off a highway building boom that produced nearly 47,000 miles of interstate highways as of 2004.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Apparantly a near tripling of the population and substantial advances in automotive technology had nothing to do with this.
The corollary to this is the idea that if you don't build roads you won't get development ~ this was tried in both San Diego county in California and Fairfax county in Virginia.
They both got massive growth, without sufficient roads!
Most of the rest of America had no interurban service.
As president he saw that although improved, the roads were still inadequate so the Interstate highway system was born. Did you know that some of the roads were fashioned as secondary landing strips for aircraft including B-47s and BUFs? One of the modifying specs occurred in the late 50s when Atlas, Thor and Jupiter missiles were being manufactured in the Western US and then missiles were hauled on special truck beds to Cape Canaveral. Drivers reported that certain detours were needed to circumvent overpasses under which the missile carrier couldn't fit. Thus bridges were/are marked and as new bridges are built the trucking industry finds life easier.
I remember hearing that for every 7-10 miles of interstate (can't remember the exact number) 1 mile of it had to be in a perfectly straight line to be used for an airstrip for emergencies.
Much as *I liked Ike™,* and have loved to drive the Interstates, the Rte66er in me needs to say "harrumph" for killing off many of the Main Street USA characteristics of small towns.
If you've gotten off the freeway at one frontage road conglomeration of gas stations and fast food franchises, you've exited at "them all." Or "the Mall" - same thing.
*sigh* Byways and bygones.
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