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?"
Little early in the day to have your nose in the slop jar isn't it?? Out of curiosity....just what shortcoming do you find in the General's ability to understand war that you take issue with??
post 18 was pretty funny. people would be complaining that people who immigrated from NYC were moving into their communities
Is the article citing $50 billion amount as what was projected in 1956, meaning, 1956 dollars?
Because adjusted for inflation, that projection equals $344,900,356,595.71 (roughly $345 billion) which is much closer to that $425 billion amount.
I already listed three case examples. Falaise, autumn 1944 stalemate, Ardennes.
I can see an argument against suburban sprawlSometimes even conservatives fall for the idea that "sprawl" is a bad thing, forgetting that it simply represents individuals living as they prefer.
The left objects because dense populations with limited mobility are easier to control.
-Eric
hell-for-leather adv Also hell-bent for leather [Engl dial; cf EDD (at hell sb.
1. (9))] scattered, but esp West Cf hell-bent for election adv phr 1 At top speed, in great haste.1919 DN 5.76 wMA, Hell bent for leather is the expression to which I am most used. 1939 (1973) FWP Guide MT 414, Hell-for-leather—In great haste. " Ridin ' hell-for-leather " suggests very hard use of leather (i.e., whip). 1939 in 1984 Lambert- Franks Voices 46 OK, Many a time I ' ve seen a bunch of bandits come riding hell-for-leather past the camp, the Regulars (the soldiers) pounding along right behind. 1940 (1942) Clark Ox-Bow 81 NV, I saw that kid Greene, from down to Drew ' s, come by here hell-for-leather half an hour ago. 1950 WELS (To run very fast, especially running away from something) 1 Inf, seWI, Run hell-for-leather. 1954 Forbes Rainbow 181 NEng, " He ' s coming so Hell-for-leather, " says Jude, " he may shoot right by us. 1968 Adams Western Words 145, Hell-for-leather. 1988 DARE File, My Dad, who grew up in Idaho, uses the term " hell-for-leather " ; I was surprised when his cousin, who is from Nebraska, said he knew it as " hell-for-election. "
Source: Dictionary of American Regional English, Harvard University Press
Mr. Inspectorette and I are hoping to take a month-long trip next year from West-East on I-80, then back home East-West on I-10, then I-5 north.
This planet would be a paradise if we could only get rid of the imperfect pesky, people.
Are you sure about that? So Ike didn't win the war fast enough for you? Maybe you should examine Field Marshal Montgomery a little closer. Or how about the parts of the Roosevelt administration that feared Allied forces would meet the Russians some where near what is now the western Polish boarder and start slugging it out with each other.
Well, the Interstate Highway System is 50 years old, and Al Gore's brain-dead environmental hyperbole is at least 20 years old.
I'm well aware of the political situation of WW2, and Montgomery's legendary aptitude for doing nothing. Problem is, Ike gave him the priority of supply throughout most of the European campaign.
Yeah, but they'll get killed off trying to make it across Pennsylvania, where merge lanes are ten feet long.
AMC was running Anastasia this A.M.; the scenes outside the bedroom window where the jointed, mechanical millipede kept appearing in the dusky twilight, windows aglow, was made real when the long-lost princess boarded the true-life version a few scenes later as though there was only one important place to go on what was then a modern train with aerodynamically-shaped cars and comfortable seats for those who deserved to be transported in such grand style and she was whisked to claim her birthright.
Such memories; fifty years or five hundred, time is always only a bend in the road away.
(Here's comes the well-dressed hare in checkered gilet and flat-brimmed grille-pain chapeau.)
So General Napoleon, why don't you tell us how much more you understand.
I believe that the Private railroads in this country are actually profitable, and have been for decades. CSX was bought by private firms after a bidding contest (about 6 years ago if I remember correctly).
What the interstates did was, with the connivance of the Automakers et al, to destroy passenger rail. Where if you are in a hurry take a plane and auto is often just as fast and much more convenient and normally cheaper (especially with a family).
The German Army didn't have anything to do with that I suppose.
Ahem. I'll take this one. Perhaps there is some confusion? Last year, according to wikipedia, this happened:
"In 2005, as part of the reconstruction of the plaza in front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an entrance was opened from 25th Street, N.W., to westbound I-66. However, at least one sign in the vicinity misidentified the route as the unrelated (and no longer existent) U.S. Highway 66.
Harrumph!
Couldn't have said it better myself!
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