The American interstate
system is often thought to be a product of the Eisenhower
administration. It’s named for him. However, the nearly 47,000 miles of
interstate were conceived largely before Eisenhower’s presidency. Even as he observed the Army’s
62-day, cross-country convoy of 1919,
engineers
were laying the political
and technical
foundations of national highways. Earl Swift tells this longer history
of the interstates in The Big Roads.
When Americans began calling
for better roads,
the typical road was mud. The loudest
calls for better roads at the beginning of the 20th Century were cyclists,
especially the colorful Carl
Fisher. Fisher’s most famous work is
the Indianapolis
Speedway, where a popular 500-mile
race continues to be run. His
promotion of the Lincoln
Highway, the first coast-to-coast highway (at least on paper), provided an
important antecedent to the interstates.
The Lincoln Highway
Association operated on a system that informed later highway development. Rather than build a huge new highway, it
selected existing roads for improvement, joining them together in a
highway. New roads were built only if
necessary. The association, a private
organization that raised private funds for road improvement and route
promotion, was a model for later systems in another way. The Lincoln
Highway
Thomas
MacDonald, an Iowa
highway engineer, was using a similar model as he worked for that state. He worked with city and county road
departments to coordinate improvements leading to a statewide system of decent
roads. When he became director of the Office
of Public Roads, he brought this model to the federal highway program,
institutionalizing it in the Federal
Aid system that began in 1916.
Of course, the U.S.
MacDonald and his engineers
began working the concept. His office
produced a report, authored primarily by Hubert
Sinclair Fairbanks, that laid out most of the current interstate system in 1938. Fairbanks
The plans for an interstate
system languished during World
War II and the years immediately following.
Eisenhower comes into the picture at this time because he strongly
supported funding for the interstate system.
Highway engineers saw
themselves as providing a good and giving the people what they wanted. Along the way, as Fairbanks
Swift gives particular
attention to two interstate opponents.
Critic Lewis
Mumford provided the intellectual and philosophical foundation for the
Freeway Revolt. Joe
Wiles, a black
professional and veteran, organized opposition to Interstate 70 in Baltimore
which resulted in changes to the plan and help unite the white and black
communities in that city. The federal
and state governments began to take seriously the possibility that interstates
could have a negative impact on the communities near them
The intestate system,
finally completed in the 1990s, is the largest public works project in
history. Now that it is built, it needs
to be maintained. It will be expensive:
$225 billion a year for the next 50 years to keep it in good shape. That is more than twice what we’re
spending. In addition, improved fuel
efficiency and reduced driving prompted by the economic downturn has reduced
gas tax revenues for the Highway
Trust Fund. In the near future, we
may need to find new ways to pay for maintaining our transportation marvel.
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