Robert Sullivan: Getting from Here to There a Little Slower May Be Welcome
This week, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Interstate highway system, a convoy will arrive in Washington, D.C., after driving I-80 across the country. It began in San Francisco and consists of ecstatic highway engineers and road historians; automobile-club representatives eager to build more Interstate highways; a leader of the "Go RVing" campaign, which serves the nation's eight million recreational-vehicle users; a descendant of President Dwight Eisenhower, who rode in the convoy that is being commemorated, as a young army officer in 1919, when he saw firsthand how ineffective the roads were; and Andrew Firestone, a descendant of the tire magnate Harvey Firestone. The original two-month-long convoy was sponsored by the United States Army. This one, expected to last 13 days, is sponsored by Bridgestone Americas, the tire company, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, known in the road business as Aashto (pronounced ASH-toe); Bridgestone is calling it the "greatest road trip in history."
Which can't possibly turn out to be true. Just think of Jack Kerouac or the Merry Pranksters or Odysseus or the Cannonball Run or even Lewis and Clark, just to name a few. Also arguable is Aashto's description of the Interstate as a "symbol of freedom." The Interstate is no longer about just freedom. In 2006, with congestion rising and traffic delays up nationwide, it also symbolizes a kind of commercial and personal strangulation.
At least since the 60's, the Interstate has been the system that all state roads and, more recently, many local suburban roads have sought to emulate. And, frankly, the Interstate System is amazing. Just look at how it has moved us; according to the Automobile Association of America, in 1956, Americans drove 628 million miles; in 2002, 2.8 billion. The even bigger story is trucks. In 1997, according to the Department of Transportation, the Interstate System handled more than 1 trillion ton-miles of stuff, a feat executed by 21 million truckers driving approximately 412 billion miles.
But the Interstate System has also given us a lot that we didn't expect. In building it during the 60's, the U.S. destroyed nearly as much public housing as it put up. Then again, in a backhanded way, the Interstate System helped spawn the modern environmental movement, with the battle over I-40 through Overton Park in Memphis, for example, and with the fight over I-75 though the Everglades. It gave us historic preservation, after wiping out middle-class black neighborhoods in New Orleans. It also gave us sprawl. It gave us Atlanta. It gave us the modern South.
The first Bush administration's plan for a second Interstate System thankfully never took off, and the alternative has become new state-grown plans to build different kinds of road. State highway departments have been taking big roads and narrowing them, adding bike lanes and trails. In the last 10 years, engineers have increasingly looked for ways not to speed cars along but to slow them down. "You can design a road that addresses mobility but also makes them want to get out of the car," says Tom Warne, a former executive director of Utah's Department of Transportation who is working with New Hampshire's D.O.T. "It's the stuff that's along the street — windows, benches, street furniture, greenery. There's meandering." In Pennsylvania, where general traffic increased by 63 percent and truck traffic by 82 percent between 1984 and 2004, there are plans to make communities across the state more walkable, to build new highways at grade rather than elevate them, to build on Route 202 in the eastern part of the state what looks less like a freeway and more like an old parkway.
It's nothing short of a revolutionary change in thinking in about what —in a nation where the average number of people in a household (1.8) was recently passed by the average number of cars (1.9) —can still seem so mundane....
Read entire article at NYT Mag
Which can't possibly turn out to be true. Just think of Jack Kerouac or the Merry Pranksters or Odysseus or the Cannonball Run or even Lewis and Clark, just to name a few. Also arguable is Aashto's description of the Interstate as a "symbol of freedom." The Interstate is no longer about just freedom. In 2006, with congestion rising and traffic delays up nationwide, it also symbolizes a kind of commercial and personal strangulation.
At least since the 60's, the Interstate has been the system that all state roads and, more recently, many local suburban roads have sought to emulate. And, frankly, the Interstate System is amazing. Just look at how it has moved us; according to the Automobile Association of America, in 1956, Americans drove 628 million miles; in 2002, 2.8 billion. The even bigger story is trucks. In 1997, according to the Department of Transportation, the Interstate System handled more than 1 trillion ton-miles of stuff, a feat executed by 21 million truckers driving approximately 412 billion miles.
But the Interstate System has also given us a lot that we didn't expect. In building it during the 60's, the U.S. destroyed nearly as much public housing as it put up. Then again, in a backhanded way, the Interstate System helped spawn the modern environmental movement, with the battle over I-40 through Overton Park in Memphis, for example, and with the fight over I-75 though the Everglades. It gave us historic preservation, after wiping out middle-class black neighborhoods in New Orleans. It also gave us sprawl. It gave us Atlanta. It gave us the modern South.
The first Bush administration's plan for a second Interstate System thankfully never took off, and the alternative has become new state-grown plans to build different kinds of road. State highway departments have been taking big roads and narrowing them, adding bike lanes and trails. In the last 10 years, engineers have increasingly looked for ways not to speed cars along but to slow them down. "You can design a road that addresses mobility but also makes them want to get out of the car," says Tom Warne, a former executive director of Utah's Department of Transportation who is working with New Hampshire's D.O.T. "It's the stuff that's along the street — windows, benches, street furniture, greenery. There's meandering." In Pennsylvania, where general traffic increased by 63 percent and truck traffic by 82 percent between 1984 and 2004, there are plans to make communities across the state more walkable, to build new highways at grade rather than elevate them, to build on Route 202 in the eastern part of the state what looks less like a freeway and more like an old parkway.
It's nothing short of a revolutionary change in thinking in about what —in a nation where the average number of people in a household (1.8) was recently passed by the average number of cars (1.9) —can still seem so mundane....