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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.
I hope they didnt count the roads in Pennsylvania, most of them (at least in NW PA) are in such bad shape, they shouldn't count as being part of a 'paved highway' system.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Wait a minute, that would be more than one bridge per mile, on average. Is that actually correct? I don't remember there being that many bridges on any of the interstates I've driven on.
For all the copycatting Eisenhower did to establish our highway system, they sure did get a lot of things wrong. Looking at today's Autobahn is a wonderous thing comparatively.
An interesting factor in difference between our highway and Germany's autobahn is the 'curviness' of the road. The Germans wanted their highway to curve with the natural landscape, and be created with a minimal of environmental destruction, which we thought was stupid. As a result, we built straighter roads, blasting through mountains and paving over forests where necessary. The result of course, was highway hypnosis, which contributes to the higher death toll and accident count on U.S. highways.
Something I've wondered about is what will happen when, sometime in the not-too-distant future, we no longer need roads for transportation because we've invented some kind of autonomous flying vehicle. What are we going to do with all that real estate? At least where I live, the roadway is too narrow to be used for additional home construction, so does all this land simply become a vast system of pedestrian malls? Or can somebody think of a better use for it? Of course the realpolitik of the situation is that the various government landowners will try to maximize the revenue to be had from selling this freed-up land, so what kind of monstrosity are they going to foist upon us?
Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.
After the Normandy invasion Ike's troops were again slogging, this time through French hedgerows. Finally when he got to Germany and could use the Autobahn, well, you know the rest of the story...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
- H. L. Mencken
Interesting Triva. Why is there an interstate highway in Hawaii when it goes to no other state?
Because all military bases, when the project was created, had to be linked to the interstate system. It was one of the selling points to the public... we can move troops and equipment in case of need to other parts of the US. So the intertate highway system in Hawaii connects the militray bases.
It also has. just barely, but has the 2 mile straight length that was demanded in each highway every so often for landing endangered aircraft.
Also from the discovery or history channel learned that lots of it was designed from the German Autobahn system and how the intersections don't stop traffic.
1. In the USA, everyone can drive, and does. Every kid 16 and over drives on the freeway. In Germany, I understand that a drivers license is not a gimme like it is here. I hear there are higher costs and stuff like that. So that filters out a lot of people as dumb as you and I were when we first drove on I-70.
2. Cost. They showed the way the Autobahn is constructed, and it can handle higher speeds than the freeway.
3. Terrain. From the little I saw, there are no Rocky Mountains for the Autobahn to cross. This makes a difference in what is a safe speed, and what kind of money you spend on making expensively-safe surfaces.
4. Tradition. I guess the Autobahn was always a speeding zone, and land speed records were even set there.
5. Congestion. Does the Autobahn have anything like the amount of traffic that the Interstates have on them?
Now, not all of these factors apply in all cases (no Rocky Mountains in Nebraska (That John Denver's full of crap!), no congestion on I-70 in Utah, etc.), but I think that when taken together they make a good case.
I guess there are other reasons, too, like different traffic laws that might have a greater impace or something, but I don't know.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
While intercity high-speed trains sound great, they don't really reduce the dependence on oil much. What we really need to replace with rail are the commuting highways. New York has quite a large mass transit system, but it is really limited by the number of trains and buses that can cross the Hudson and East Rivers.
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I think that the market is doing surprisingly well at encouraging people to take mass transit -- I've noticed ridership on my current bus line, as well as my previous train line, increase as gas prices have gone up. Real estate in towns with train stations is more in demand than real estate in towns without mass transit.
The next step is for states (with grants from the federal government) to build more mass transit. If you build it, they will come & all that. There are two problems:
1) NIMBYs objecting to railroad tracks near their property
2) People in government thinking that the government should not subsidize mass transit.
I believe that, in urban areas, mass transit should be funded at the same amount as the road system.
One other thing -- our roads are getting much more expensive to maintain -- tar is getting more expensive (it's a petroleum product, after all). Much cheaper in the long run to maintain rails than roadways.
In the end, though, what's repsonsible for dominance of the roadways over mass transit is the automobile industry. The federal highway system is a handout to the auto manufacturers, the fuel companies, and the workers in those industries -- not that I disagree with public works, I think they are necessary and good, but it's important to realize that the lack of support for mass transit initiatives among our legislators is due to the auto lobby and the auto workers' lobbies.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as I don't expect the Congress could ever again pass such a massive project.
Remember, the Interstate Highway System was a response to the problems of moving military assets across the US during WWII. It's great for visiting grandma, but it's really a national security asset.
So our current national security risk is our dependence on foreign sources of energy. I'd love to see a project on this scale to rebuild the national grid, make it easy to get wind power from the Dakotas or Solar power from New Mexico to Boston or LA. Our current grid can't do this and it's a big deal to make one that can. Tie in end-user-generated solar and build out broadband to everybody at the same time and you'd do a real benefit to the country.
When that's done we can get started with upgrading the Interstates for Personal Rapid Transit.
I look forward to reading the part of the series on the politics of passage.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
While all of the glory is nice and neat, let's look at the drawbacks: 1. For all the money spent on the interstate system, we could've built up our public transportation infrastructure, which needed a makeover, and have enough money to invest in cities, which also needed a makeover. 2. Sprawl and Suburbia: Now we are faced with sprawl and suburbia. While some may find this a good thing, I personally prefer the European lifestyle in large built-up cities. Suburbia is not self-sustaining. A public transportation system is not feasible in surubria. Do you know of a suburb that is not next to a city? If so, it's not called a suburb, but a rural area. 3. Strip Malls: they existed in very limited quantities before the interstate system. 4. Bad Maintenance: While we built the highways we don't know how to maintain them... pieces are going to crumble bit by bit until we have a makeover or until everything's gone 5. America is a gas-guzzling addict: Even Bush said so. The first step to fighting this adiction is admitting it. Before the interstate, we relied less on cars and more on public transit. Of course, it was harder to get around too. 6. Ever try breathing in L.A.? Yeah... you know what I'm talking about. 7. Trucking Industry - transporting things by train and using trucks for the last n miles is far more efficient, and using electric trains is even more efficient. 8. American teens are now forced into cars at the age of 16, which not only promotes bad lifestyle habits, but also continues the sprawl and suburbia. 9. Declining health/obesity: I admit, I'm not thin as a string. I tried both walking and driving to work for 6 months at a time... after 6 months of walking/public transit (which increased my commute by about 20 mins) I found amazing results - not only had I lost weight but also started feeling better, less stressed ("Ah another train will be along in 7 minutes, no big deal, no need to rush") and I also got some work done on the train/subway. Talk about benefits Of course some may find these things as benefits, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or however the saying goes). Now for the benefits: 1. Easier to get around the country. 2. Drivers are independent from public transit's schedules (of course this is a chicken and egg question: if there were more passengers, the service would be more frequent). 3. Americans can enjoy their suburban dream (although I don't think suburbia is a dream.... even considering the fact that crime rate in suburbia per 100K people is higher than it is in the city; also, in the city you know where most of the crime's happening and you can avoid those areas if you so desire). 4. Cars are not a luxury anymore, but rather a necessity. 5. American teens can break out of their shell when they turn 16. 6. ......
In the end, it's all about what kind of lifestyle you want to lead and whether or not you're a typical suburbanite or the new urban type.
-Palal
I have to disagree completely. We pay so much for highways and roadways in taxes and fees that we don't directly notice, but we don't know what options might have become available to use had we not had so many subsidies offering "cheap" roadways.
I've lately become enamored with private planes and flying. One of my neighbors (actually, he lives about 2 miles from me) has 2 private runways in his backyard. He lands his 4 passenger and 6 passenger prop planes on his lawn. Safely. For years.
Most of his flying is to other private runways such as his, that dot almost every area and region in the U.S. How do we know we wouldn't all be flying inexpensive planes rather than cars? Maybe the highways have made it easy to rip us off with gas taxes and excessive tolls because they were built. They were built before the real boom in inexpensive airplanes began (I can purchase a reasonable Cessna in great shape for less than US$20K).
While the fuel cost is likely higher, we really don't have a competitive marketplace yet because it was stillborn for so many years while the auto industry pandered to Congress to build more roadways at taxpayers expense rather than let the free market of billions of consumer decisions create what we really want and need.
I'm not putting any faith in the highways, either. My best friend is the son of the largest highway contractor in a big western state, and he's told me how much collusion and theft occurs every day in that industry. Thank government? Not for this mess.
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.
I live in the UK. We used to have the best railway network in the world. Hell, we invented them. Then we had Margaret Thatcher, who loved cars, and we had decades of apathetic state-funded railway management, and then we sold the whole lot off to Railtrack, who didn't maintain the network for ten years and caused several huge railway crashes, and as a result the rail network these days is expensive, unreliable, and slow.
And it's still orders of magnitude better than the US system. The last time I went there --- it was to North Carolina, and I'm quite aware that North Carolina is not the US's best point --- it was like visiting a third world country. Where any European airport is smoothly integrated into a quiet, cleanly running mass transit hub, we got out at Raleigh into a dirty, smelly car park full of honking horns. We had to hire a car to get to the fairly large town where we were going simply because we couldn't find out any other way to get there. (There may have been buses, but we were all completely unable to find any kind of centralised bus timetable system.) It was a hell of a culture shock.
This April I went skiing in Austria. I got the bus from my house to Reading railway station; got the bus there to Heathrow; flew to Munich; got on the mass transit from the airport to central Munich; got a long-distance train to Jenbach; got on the Zillertalbahn mountain railway to Mayrhofen; and then got on the Postbus from Mayrhofen to the guest house where I was staying; I got dropped off at the door. Sounds complicated? I went to the Deutschbahn website, told it I wanted to go from Reading, UK to Juns, Austria and it routed the whole lot for me. Through three countries. Everything was on time, too.
Are there really enough people going from Boston to DC to support a 4 hour train over a 7 hour one?
Add stops in Philly and New York, and, absolutely. Boston to Washington is under 450 miles. A good train should be able to cover that distance in 3 hours, or 3.5 with stops at the outer edge. Shuttle flights run either hourly or half-hourly between *all* the city pairs in that group and are usually full. "Chinatown" buses leave almost as frequently and are also full; a faster, cleaner and safer train with reasonably priced tickets would probably peel off some of those travelers. And I expect if people could travel around the Northeast without the hassles of the other methods, or the insanity that is parking in New York or Boston, they might travel more often. I know I would -- as a Boston-area resident (for the moment) I'd go to New York every month just for the hell of it.
In my world the trains would not only be faster but cleaner, more pleasant, and much more frequent and reliable. My vision is modeled on the intercity line between Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland. Those trains run hourly and are a wonderful way to get places, unlike anything we have here.
Slower trains could cover the regional lines between each city. With the rebuilding that would be necessary for the high-speed trains, the regionals would speed up too.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
A better question may be, do we need that many bottle caps? More steel is used in the US to make bottle caps than auto bodies. http://www.skygaze.com/content/facts/manufacturing .shtml s ting_facts.htm s ode/780563/summary.html
http://www.berro.com/entertainment/general_intere
http://www.tv.com/modern-marvels/heavy-metals/epi
The Autobahn is built differently. The biggest difference is that the road surface throughout the Autobahn system is somewhere around 27 inches thick. Most interstates, by comparison, are only 16-18 inches thick. The extra durability makes for a road that's consistently in better condition, which is why it's no big deal to do 100+ mph with a properly-maintained car over there. OTOH, they're more expensive to build. If the interstates were built to the same spec as the Autobahn, the system wouldn't be nearly as extensive as it is.
This page has some interesting Autobahn info.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Sign, burning two mod points on this (both +funny, whatever), but it's an issue that comes up whenever I talk with Europeans about mass transit, and how they can't understand why we don't have a rail system.
The fundamental problem is that Europeans cannot fully grasp the difference in scale invoved in America, especially in the American West. (It's big. It is really really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it is long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to Texas.) I travel rather often from San Diego, through Los Angeles, and to the Bay Area / San Francisco (these are the three major cities in California, incidentally). The trip takes 8-10 hours to complete, depending on traffic passing through Los Angeles. There is a single rail line that runs down the coast. Once per day it travels between SF and SD, and you have to get up at 5AM to catch it. It takes 11 hours.
San Francisco and San Diego are 500 miles apart.
By comparison, Amsterdam to Paris is 500 *km* apart. The distance from San Diego to San Francisco would span the breadth of England (London to Inverness was 8 hours by train, and is about 550 miles, as is Paris to Nice). When I was in Europe, I was constantly surprised about how little time it took to travel from one city to the next while I was on a train. When you live in the American West, you get used to 6 hour drives at 75-80 miles per hour where you literally see no living human beings outside of the gas stations and rest stops. And maybe some farms.
Europe is very heavily built up. It's dense. Rail networks make a lot more sense in dense networks than in sparse ones. That same rail line that runs to Oxford (60 miles from London) can be used to connect to Warwick, or Stratford-upon-Avon (if my memory serves). The rail network in California is essentially a 3-node graph with a line between SF, LA, and SD. With two mountain ranges in between, to boot. The train company loses money on the line pretty consistently. There's literally nothing in between to make the run profitable. San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz are nice places, don't get me wrong, but they simply aren't volume destinations. And because it's not profitable, there won't be any more private infrastructure development. The State of California has been toying with the notion of building a high speed line from SF to SD for a while now, but, hell, I ran the numbers myself. Japan wouldn't have built a high speed rail line if their cities were all 500 miles apart. It's too costly. The main island of Japan is about 600 miles long, total.
It's not a better-than or worse-than comparison, I'm simply stating the facts. You have to have a certain critical mass of density to make rail networks worth your while. An analogy that works well with Europeans I've met: Imagine France. Now imagine there is nothing in the country but Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. None of the little villages, towns, and cities. Nothing but desert. Now consider the practicality of a rail network in the country. This is Texas.
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This isn't an America-is-bigger-is-better argument. In fact, I can pretty firmly say that I would greatly prefer being able to travel to another city in an hour or two. I lose an entire day whenever I make the trip. A drive to Phoenix, first major city east of San Diego (Yuma doesn't count) is 6 hours (@75 MPH) through almost nothing but desert. To the average San Diegan or San Franciscan, the other city is akin to a vacation destination. Road Trips are boring as hell unless you find a way to entertain yourself -- I personally go through audiobooks like water.
Rail Networks simply don't work when the graphs are so sparse. Out in the middle of the desert, a car moves faster than a train, and costs less, so why bother going to the hassle of parking your car in long term parking (unless you have a garage of your own), and paying more money to travel slower? I'd do it just for the scenic-ness of it, except you have to board at 5AM to get in
Bingo. All of Germany is about the size of Wyoming. Extending the Autobahn to the former East Germany, roughly a third the size of the former West, is a work in progress.
Also, keeping right except to pass is not uniformly followed even in Germany. There's a great billboard showing nearly all the cars in the left lane with the caption "und Sie?" (and You?). But going 220 kph (~ 132 mph) is a kick, even when others overtake! Absolute Hell on the fuel efficiency, however.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...