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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.
>"The amount of Portland cement could build more than 80 Hoover dams, or lay six sidewalks to the moon"
Wait a minute, nobody told me six sidewalks to the moon was one of the options! I would have totally voted for the sidewalk thing...
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.
about enough potholes to covers the surface of Jupiter six times and enough roadwork delays to equal 13 years of your life waitng in congested traffic to get to work :/
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.
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?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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
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.
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"
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
1. Yes, it costs the equivalent of a few thousand dollars to go to Fahrschule (driving school) and you have to be 18 to be able to get your license.
2. The Autobahn is about twice as thick as the interstate. As a result, it doesn't crack as much. And when it does, they rip out that section and replace it. Think about that the next time you're on I-70 in Utah (north of Moab).
3. There are speed limits in lots of places on the Autobahn, especially around the cities.
4. Speed records were set, yes, even with its curves following the natural terrain.
5. Try driving on the Autobahn during Sommerferien (summer vacation). Parts of the Autobahn can literally turn into parking lots.
I think the biggest factors are 1 (better trained drivers who have to pass real tests) and 2 (better maintained roads) along with cars that are built to travel at higher speeds.
"If you mess with us, we're going to take you on, even to our utter destruction, whatever occurs." - Ralph Yarro (SCO)
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
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.
Please stop comparing our size to the size of other things; please stop covering us to a certain thickness in material; please stop laying our women end to end (and remarking that no one would be surprised); please stop filling in other places or events with multiples of our population. Enough is enough!
-- Connecticut Residents Against Nonconsensual Comparisons