Posted on 06/28/2006 11:04:21 AM PDT by Graybeard58
On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed a bill to build the Interstate Highway System - a dream of his since he crossed the US in 1919 and, later, after he saw Hitler's autobahn. Little did he know what 46,876 miles of expressways would do.
Fifty years on, the nation is still taking stock of the impact of high-speed roads connecting big cities. The system was finished only last year with the completion of Boston's "Big Dig" project. Instead of taking 10 years and $50 billion to build as envisioned, the 62 routes took nearly a halfcentury to finish and, in today's dollars, cost $425 billion.
Just as the "information superhighway" (the Internet) is now taken for granted as essential to daily life, so, too, is the Interstate Highway System. Both require amazing levels of cooperation to build and maintain. Both have helped unify the country. And yet both are bearers of good and bad effects. In fact, lessons from the Interstate are worth applying to the Internet, which is still in relative infancy.
As the world's largest public-works project, the Interstate fully transformed Americans into a car-centric, oil-guzzling, and pollution-spewing people. Soon after the system's first cross-country link (I-80) was completed in 1986, Al Gore declared, hyperbolically, that the automobile's environmental effects is "more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront." That warning is quite a contrast from an original reason for the Interstate, which was to allow quick movement of military forces and, possibly, mass evacuations of cities during the cold war. (The exodus of 1.5 million people before hurricane Katrina proved the worth of big highways.)
The Internet, too, originated as a useful tool for sharing military research, and while serving the public immensely, it also serves as a vehicle for terrorist communications and forfor other vice from porn to gambling.
Some say it has adversely altered community life, creating new forms of isolation, much the way Interstates tore up cities and helped create sprawling, pedestrian-unfriendly suburbs. More communities now want sound-barriers along Interstates and to limit the highways' impact on downtown life, while many people want to limit the Internet's effects and return to face-to-face talking.
What really pushed both the Interstate and the Internet into full blossom was business. (Both systems greatly boosted economic productivity.) The trucking industry lobbied heavily for new highways, while Internet-dependent businesses today are fighting to expand (or control) the Web.
Both these people-connectors are suffering from congestion and inadequate maintenance. To keep up with repairs of the Interstate, some states are turning to private ownership and mileage fees. To expand the Internet, cable and telephone companies want to charge for high-speed access.
Indeed, both systems allow Americans to speed up their lives. But the Interstate's effects show society must humbly, carefully adopt the Internet.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, a General Motors exhibit called Futurama predicted fast highways by 1960, with speeds up to 100 m.p.h. A narrator's voice carried both hope and caution: "Who can say what new horizons lie before us?"
Could it be because The Big Three (Ford, GM, Chrysler) bribed, er, lobbied Congress more effectively to promote the highway system? (You could probably throw in U.S. Steel, along with Goodyear, B. F. Goodrich, etc.)
"...the original name was the Interstate Defense Highway System, and it was justified on defense grounds."
This is precisely why the Interstate system was proposed...for defense purposes, so that we could easily move our forces across the continent in the event of an invasion.
Were there an internet 60 years ago, we would've found out about the circumstances of Falaise, Ardennes, and the general stalemate of autumn 1944 much sooner.
So, you're right.
60 years ago it was 1946.
We are being invaded.
The original plan was to only have 7 roads - - - - three east - west and four north south. The Isystem is required to have one out of every five miles to be straight so that in a time of war we may have airports taken out but we would be able to use the Isystem as runways.
They did the same thing in Switzerland and originally used rubber poles as dividers of the opposite lanes so they could be pulled up and the road used as runways for aircraft.
I stopped reading right there. The writer killed the article. So much for an objective piece.
Bet the last 1% cost half that total.
Finished last year?
Then why are there still signs along the Cumberland/Western Kentucky Parkway in KY that say "Future Home of I-66"?
. . . . and in the beginning the novelty of the Isystem was such that familys in Penn would drive out and park in the 12-20 foot medians on Sunday afternoon and have a picnic lunch . . . . checkered table cloth on the ground and everything.
Yes, I know. Finding out about the events I described took decades.
And created unprecedented personal freedom of movement and wealth.
But the hoi polloi aren't supposed to have such; they should just humbly submit to the ideas and notions of their betters, like editorial writers.
How many of you remember the massive imminent domain battles it caused?
It seems like my childhood was filled with stories of little old ladies or old men holding off the bulldozers with a shotgun.
If my memory is correct there was a sympathetic tone to the press coverage then, of these individuals, we knew they had to go, but we were respectful of their stubbornness and old fashioned property beliefs, and regretful of what we had to impose on them.
Or the fact that it could have been done by private industry much cheaper. What was one of Eisenhower's ridiculous claims? To transport the military more quickly? Have to hand it to politicians of both stripes. Looking for a way to waste taxpayer dollars tie it to defense or some other form of nationalism. Heck, I'm suprised we've never been told the boondoggle International Space Station was for collecting intelligence for a possible invasion from Neptune...
The liberating freedom created by the interstate highway system is by far the greatest gift we have given ourselves as a nation.
I was thinking the same thing, we have been given notice that when I-69 comes through our town I have to give up my business building to it.
Not sure how you can call giving the opening for the federal government to intervene into what are clearly state issues (drinking age, seat belt laws, etc) as a 'gift'. On top of that having to pay and repay for shoddy workmanship done half ass by construction crews that know they're working off the government's dime. Gift? More like yet another curse laid upon us by the national government
Having said that, we've driven the I-5 from San Diego all the way to Blaine, Washington, and with some exceptions, notably the magnificient Siskiyou Mountains, it's dull and boring.
When we have the time, we much prefer to take Highway 1 and US-101 so as to enjoy the gorgeous California and Oregon coasts.
I also remember back in the Fifties before the Mass. Turnpike and New York Thruway were built, taking the old Route 20 through small-town America from Massachusetts to Indiana. It was a simpler and slower time.
(Maybe I just want to slow the clock now that I'm getting old ;-)
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