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Interstate Highway System: 50th Anniversary
Steve Melito writes "This week, CR4: The Engineer's Place for Discussion and News, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, "a giant nationwide engineering project" that transformed a nation. In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers described the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System as "one of the Seven Wonders of the United States". In 2006, this network of roads includes 46,000 miles of highway; 55,000 bridges; 82 tunnels, and 14,000 interchanges. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), excavation for the interstate system has moved enough material to bury the State of Connecticut knee-deep in dirt. The amount of Portland cement could build more than 80 Hoover dams, or lay six sidewalks to the moon. The lumber used would consume all of the trees in 500 square miles of forest. The structural steel could build 170 skyscrapers the size of the Empire State Building, and meet nearly half of the annual requirements of the American auto industry.
Check back with CR4 all week as we cover the 'Roots of the Road,' 'the Politics of Passage,' 'Adventures in Civil Engineering,' and 'The Road Ahead.'" One of the things that's interesting about why Eisenhower pushed for the highway system was that he saw the Autobahn system in Germany during the occupation post-WWII and knew that that was one of the things that the United States needed to develop.
...of businesses being charge for their customers using the roads. Yes, roads are a good argument for network neutrality.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
And has encouraged americans to use enough gas to fill a swimming pool, each year.
Ike also saw the wonderful mass transit capable of the european trains, but that wasn't good enough...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
People are always so harsh on the government's ability to do things, and are quick to promote private industry as the better alternative, but this is one of the major public sector success stories.
I think in cases like this, private industry just would not have the resources and coordination to pull it off. Nor the motivation.
But in any case, NOBODY, public or private, wants to do mega-projects anymore. Complacency is the word of the day.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
"See Russia, we can out-fight, and out-produce you, and we both have nukes, so even if its close to a draw, we'll win."
Thanks Ike, for giving the US the upper hand in the Cold War. He's also the one whose parting words were something like "Beware the military-industrial complex." A wise man, why can't we get Presidents like this anymore?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Almost certainly includes small roads' bridges over the interstate. They may be less than 1/mile in some areas, but it seems like in much of the northeast, especially cities, they're quite frequent.
If they're counting any part of the road that doesn't touch the 'ground' as a bridge, that makes perfect sense. There's many bridges that cover very short distances and span little creeks or washes, especially in the great plains region I've noticed.
Not every bridge crosses the Mississippi.
Doubt they'd count overpasses/underpasses, that'd probably really inflate the number...
The problem with highways is that there are entirely too many exits and entrances. Most of the traffic we experience is due to merging errors and crashes caused by merging.
If you look at a map of any place with urban sprawl, like Atlanta, highways are the first cancerous veins that spread the disease of McMansions and thirty mile commutes. If there were far less highway entrances and exits, and someone besides complete idiots in the zoning office, the inconvenience of driving five miles to the nearest highway exit would cause more people to buy homes closer to town. Cities would then be more efficent and better served by mass transit systems. With less cars, and fewer and shorter car commutes, we'd also lessen our dependence on foreign oil. People would be forced to do more with less, so instead of having entire floors that go unused (yet still air conditioned), more efficient townhomes and apartments would be used instead.
Proper city planning will determine which civilization survives the 21st century the best. It's too bad America is doing so poorly.
Sheesh, he wasn't a troll... it's a valid point, if simplistically put. /rolls eyes
We need both highways and mass transport, and the failing of 1950s planning was that it prioritized highways above all else. A better use of resources would have been to build the rural and interstate parts of the system the same way they were built, but to substitute trains for some of the capacity in the urban network.
In Europe, they've got it all. Their intercity highways are better than ours. And for commuting, they have train networks that actually work and are pleasant enough that people want to use them. Saves gas, saves time (the high-speed trains are faster and you don't have to park them), and you can still drive your car just fine when you are going somewhere the trains don't go or don't reach effectively.
At this point I'd like to see the next big infrastructure investment be in a European-style intercity, high-speed train network to give people an alternative to highways. It wouldn't work across the great expanses of the West, but it would work just fine from Chicago eastward and along the West Coast. Imagine getting from Boston to Washington in 3 1/2 hours without the hassle of airport transportation, TSA bullshit, etc., etc. and simultaneously reducing airport congestion. Sounds worthwhile to me.
One major thing that Ike failed to bring over from the German system: driver's education.
The U.S. education, licensing and renewal of drivers is a joke. Personally, I don't want anyone who didn't make 95% on their test on the road, but here we have most of the drivers who made 70% and it shows, every day. To further agitate the issue, law enforcement and insurance companies have too much forgiveness: four tickets/year allowed (in TX), defensive driving courses (what a joke).
I wouldn't drive to work every day if I had an alternative. Personally, I'd rather go back to horses.
"why can't we get Presidents like this anymore?"
Because anyone with huevos enough to buck the status quo or speak unpopular truths gets the Rove treatment.
So we'll be getting agreeable dunces from now on.
Dunces with strings to make them dance.
One of the things that's interesting about why Eisenhower pushed for the highway system was that he saw the Autobahn system in Germany during the occupation post-WWII and knew that that was one of the things that United States needed to develop. Just too bad it is STILL one of the things that the United States needs to develop. The Autobahn is a meticulessly well maintained super-highway with engineered drive surfaces, well gradiated turns, and minimal obstructions of view to drivers. The surface itself is designed to remove water from contact with tires, which greatly enhanses performance in wet weather. With almost no "small hills" to obstruct/obscure the view in front of the driver, situations do not exist for a slowdown that is over a blind hill to cause an accident since drivers always have more then enough warning of traffic slowdowns, accidents, or broken-down vehicles in their lane to either change lanes, slow down, or otherwise avoid the problem. This is also the reason why parts of the Autobahn system have no speed limits, only strict rules for which lane to be in and rules to let vehicles traveling faster then you to pass you... We STILL don't have ANYTHING NEAR LIKE THAT.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Boston's Big Dig moved a major above ground route underground. They're supposedly converting the old route into parks. Of course there's some fighting over the land since it was debatably stolen to make the elevated highway and the previous owners want it back. I personally think that by the time they have it all sorted out, they'll need the space for roads again to increase capacity, since no one is going to want to pay for Big Dig 2.
Getting off track a bit.. I think it's outrageous that we're spending billions to make bigger and bigger roads. The highway system isn't scalable to the point we need it to be. They just finished expanding the highway I commute on from 2 lanes to 3 (in each direction). It helped, but it's going to draw more people to live in those communities now when they wouldn't have considered living there before because of the traffic. So then what? Four lanes? Five? Underground tunnels?
What we need is effective mass transport, at least in populated areas of the US like eastern MA. I don't want to be stuck on the highway everyday but there is no real alternative. I'd rather take rail if it were available, at least I could read or use a laptop or do something partially productive. That would also cut down on our dependency on oil, road rage, traffic fatalities, stress, insurance premiums, so on and so forth. Use the land the highways take up and build a decent rail system.
Too bad he didn't notice their train system while he was over there too. Our lack of a national public transportation system is wasteful and embarassing.
Americans, we like our freedom.
I have never felt more free than when I hopped on a Shinkansen with little more than 30 minutes' notice, and traveled all the way across Japan in less than four hours -- all while reading a book.
I have never felt less free than when paying for an auto loan, auto insurance, registration, maintenance and gasoline, just to make life in my home city possible.
Latent taxation, poor public transportation and a national dependence on black goop sucked from beneath some of the most US-hostile countries on earth: you have a funny definition of freedom.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
What's this obsession with using screwdrivers to bang nails in?
Your example of a camping trip is possibly the absolute worst thing that a mass-transit system would be good for. Nobody in their right mind would suggest building a railway simply to take three people out into the wilderness. That's the kind of thing that cars are ideally suited for.
Conversely, commuter traffic, or bulk transport, are the absolute worst thing that personal transport systems are good for. You're using a separate vehicle, each with its own engine, for each person? When most of them are travelling the same route at the same time? That's just silly.
What's appropriate is to use a rail system for commuting from suburbia to the city centre twice daily, or to carry a million tonnes of coal from Texas to New York City (or whereever). And you use the car when you want to go camping.
The first step when decided what the right tool is for a particular job is to be aware that more than one tool exists!
Although some historians claim that Eisenhower's motivations were military in nature, the nation's civilian population reaped the rewards
True, but the military aspect played a huge part in the funding for the interstate highway system. The interstates provide a tried-and-true platform for moving tanks and other heavy war material a very long distance, with minimal fuel and minimum time. A column of tanks can move across the whole of our nation in about three days time. That's significant when you consider an enemy force not wanting 2,000 M1s staring at them.
Informatus Technologicus
I've driven the Autobahn, and I've done tens of thousands of km driving on the US Interstate highway system (running a SCCA race team means a lot of long-haul driving going from event to event)
The only thing the Autobahn has going for it are the occasional unlimited speed sections, most of which seemed absent on my drives from Stuttgart->Nurburg and Stuttgart->Munich - there were speed limits on most of the distance (either 120 km/h or 140 km/h)
Incidentally, posted speed limits notwithstanding,average car traffic speed on Interstates in the Midwest is between 120-140 km/h.
So what has the US system got on the Autobahn?
1) Interstates are numbered odd numbers North/South and even numbers East/West. Main routes have 2 digits, and connectors and bypasses have 3 digits, where the last two digits are the ID of the MSR that it connects to. This makes it very easy to tell (in most cases) which Interstate you need to be on, even if you don't know local geography that well. If you are West of Detroit, and you want to go to Toledo (south of Detroit) and you are on I-96 approaching the the I-275 interchange, you can tell that:
a) you are travelling E/W
b) 275 runs N/S
c) 275 links up with 75, also N/S
d) So taking 275 to 75 is moving you in the right direction.
2) There is only one allowed intersection between any two Interstates. The intersection of I-69 and I-94 is unique. That is NOT the case with Autobahns, which can loop back on each other and cross in multiple places. This very nearly got me lost on the way to Stuttgart from the Nurburgring, and the only reason I caught it was that the sun was in the wrong place after the interchange....
3) On/off ramps onto Interstates are labelled with the name of the nearest major city AND the direction of travel - so you might see "I-70 West - Topeka" and "I-70 East - Kansas City". Autobahns are labelled with the name of SOME city in that direction, but I never discovered the pattern; and with the city density in Germany, trying to find the city on the map (in one of two directions) while rapidly approching the exit, without the aid of a dedicated navigatrix, can be daunting.
4) Exits are numbered with the current mile marker value, and the mile marker value itself is the distance along the Interstate within that state. Working out time, distance, and fuel problems in your head become VERY simple. If I am at mile marker 20, and I need to take exit 140, and I am travelling at 60 MPH, then I have 2 hours of travel before my exit. Note that this wasn't always true - Florida and Georgia held out on sequential exit numbering for a long time - but as far as I know, everything is mile marked now.
5) I refute the claim to "highway hypnosis" being a problem; having done multiple all-night driving stints trying to make it to events on time, the general straightness of the Interstate makes the road network safer (especially in bad weather) gives you much better sightlines, and saves fuel, especially with big rigs. The few exceptions to this rule can really stand your hair on end imagine coming around a corner at 70 MPH with 14,000 lbs of car hauler to find that traffic has stopped dead... yikes!
Seriously, the US Interstate system is a wonder of design and is transportation networking done nearly perfectly. It takes almost all the best features of the Autobahn and then improves on them.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
>> The lumber used would consume all of the trees in 500 square miles of forest.
What do they mean "would"? If that's the amount of wood used, then 500 square miles of forest was most definitely consumed, no?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
I've visited the US. The whole "stockpiling" grocery shopping mentality is frightful. You people have bread that lasts more than a few days... that's just not right. Most of the stuff in the shops in the US is atrocious "long life" processed rubbish.
People in sensible countries just take a walk down the street to a local shop, or at most, hop on a bus or train to the city centre, market, or supermarket for a couple of bags of food.
Buying fresh produce is a delight. Fresh fruit, vegetables, meat from a butcher counter, warm freshly baked bread. You just can't expect to buy that in bulk weekly/fortnightly.
Besides, you can have a car too, or take a taxi, if you have a big family or genuinely need to stock up for some big meals.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
The structural steel could ... meet nearly half of the annual requirements of the American auto industry.
The sad part is when you look at it the other way: The American auto industry would only survive six months on all the steel in all the Interstate highways in the entire United States. Do we really need that many cars?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Exactly. The autobahn also has variable speeds to better accomodate traffic.
....
You would think with us being the country that depends on cars more than anyone else we would have at least gotten this right
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
That's a *benefit*?! Yes, driving is fun. As I said before, *having* to drive sucks royally for a variety of reasons.
5. American teens can break out of their shell when they turn 16.
Even if they weren't able to drive, they'd still break out of their shells. If fewer people drove, more people would live in denser conditions, where it's possible to walk or bicycle to places worth going to. Being able to drive is a sign of coming of age. It does not in itself make you come of age...
-b.
I normally wouldn't have been so harsh I am just so damn sick that everytime the topic of US car usage comes up Europeans have to say how they are so superior since they can ride public transportation everywhere, "who needs a car?" they say. They bring up how they are so great since they can walk to the local grocery store often as well which is not an option for many Americans either. It comes up EVERYTIME and it is great that they have those options available to them but over here in America there are still large amounts of areas that are sparsely populated and a lot of places that still even have dirt roads so mass transit is way out of the picture. Unless a person lives in a pretty urban area mass transit is usually non-existant. I live in the northern suburbs of Chicago and we actually have a really good bus and train system which I use almost everyday but this is far from the norm.
"People in sensible countries just take a walk down the street to a local shop, or at most, hop on a bus or train to the city centre, market, or supermarket for a couple of bags of food."
That is NOT a poor choice of words, that is directly saying "I am better than you" and I am sick of it. Non-American's love to say how American's always act like they are better than non-American's yet they love to do the same exact thing, how is that right?
"You people have bread that lasts more than a few days... that's just not right. Most of the stuff in the shops in the US is atrocious "long life" processed rubbish."
That was another line that just spews "I am better than you". We have A LOT more people to feed over here and we do have local bakeries available for people who prefer freshly baked bread but with the amount of mouths we have to feed I think having bread that doesn't spoil quickly (and other foods too) is better since less will be wasted. Of course, having a diet that consists ONLY of processed food is a bad idea but just having it available is not "atrocious", we have plenty of fresh foods available as well.
"And if a beating is Chicago's response to criticism of American food-shopping habits, it doesn't exactly project the image of a sensible country."
No that doesn't project the image of a sensible country and I was going overboard since I was pissed off, but what do people do when you continually pick on them? They retaliate, and sometimes harshly. It might not seem like a big deal this one time but thats just it, it wasn't this one time, it is over and over and over again.
In closing I want Europeans to stop bringing up the above things I mentioned since it is tired, old, and for the most part baseless when put into perspective of the real situation over here in America.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.