Time for a new highway system.

Politicians of the post World War I era who starved private transit systems of the funds needed to improve their infrastructures, by refusing to allow fare increases, helped pave the way (so to speak) for the advent of the limited access highway system that began later in the decade and came to full fruition 25 years later with the Interstate system (which does serve its original purpose as a high-speed intercity transportation method for goods, but has failed miserably in its secondary goal of making transportation around those same cities easier).

I've driven long distances on the IHS's precursors. Roads like 60, 178, 30: Two lanes of blacktop slowing to a jog in every podunk town. The IHS is superior in every respect when it comes to getting from Point A to far distant Point B. An additional data point: I received 3 speeding tickets last year. All 3 occured when I ventured onto rural 2 lane interstate. I've never had a problem on a limited access highway. Give me those curving ribbons of concrete anyday.

When you're in the business of smuggling contraband like Werner von Braun, these sorts of spin-offs are practically inevitable.

Still, while negotiating those ubiquitous clover leafs, lie back, close your eyes (well, keep one eye open), and think of those gorgeous parallel ribbons of steel criss-crossing The Land.

I may be one of the only "bros" who was actually on the road prior to 1956. Traveling on those two-lane black tops that bubbled and blistered in the hot weather through town after town was incredibly tedious and contrary to what youngun's like my kids think, there was plenty of traffic and every engine spewed out noxious fumes turning the air purple.

There was also no A/C in the car or in the mom and pop motels along the way, few other roadside amenities, cars that tended to overheat, tires that tended to blow out and other hazards like demented officers of the law picking up an extra buck or two from strangers driving though their towns.

Driving while sporting New York tags was hazardous to the health of your wallet especially south of the Mason-Dixon line. There was no such thing as credit cards either, so getting stopped for speeding meant getting out the traveler's checks and signing them over or spending the night in jail.

Prior to the highway system, we really weren't a united country in the sense we are today. We did quite a bit of traveling and remember regional accents that were very pronounced and in some cases unintelligible. People were wary of strangers and you really couldn't drink the water in eateries at the side of the road.

Thanks to Ike all that changed. Now a new highway system now should be designed with today's world in mind instead of just incessantly widening existing roads like I 95 which long ago outlived its design.

What would you envision in its place? Please do elaborate. Or publish an article on how to get from what we now have and rely on to what we'd be better off with.

There were train lines in its place. But Ike chose to ape Hitler.

erp:

Yes, the homogenization is one of the chief damages.

erp,

I hope you understand that "today's world" is a world in which a large number of commuters travel from suburb-to-suburb. It's the "edge city" phenomenon, and you may not necessarily need a whole new road system for that. All the traffic needs can be handled in the existing Right-of-way.

J,

Something along the lines of what Texas is starting right now with the Trans-Texas Corridor, or with the new toll roads in Florida.

And if it's not possible to get new Right-of-Way for new toll roads, then put Managed Toll Lanes down the middle of most interstates, where feasible.

Now, now, you're being quite unfair to Adolf, who, after all, did have a knack for using trains.

And certain traincars, sentimentalist that he was.

(Nonetheless, it is true that the Trans-Siberia is a thing of beauty. A sine qua non of sorts---unless the Gulag was one's destination, of course.)

Odd how OJ keeps writing about the ever-higher GDP and the past 25 years of economic energy, but can't thank one of the pillars.

The interstate system has been a mess in the cities, but it is surely an overall plus everywhere else (except for places like Radiator Springs). Hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of new jobs exist in Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc., because materials and products can be shipped point-to-point.

And, it's easier for people to, as the ad says, move about the country. If somebody gets tired of CA or MA, just drive on. The interstate system helps fill up the red states.

oj,

The IHS did not kill the railroads, it merely officiated at the funeral. Passenger rail peaked in the 30s and then lingered on life support.

I'd like to think you're not enough of an anti-Hayekian to favor the kind of central planning the elimination of personal transport would require. But plenty of others are so you won't have to accept responsibility.

Of greater concern to me is the Internet. I abandoned dialup for DSL because the former was too slow. Now even with the latter, web pages -- including yours -- take longer and longer to load. So I suppose I'll go for a fiber-optic connection, which will slow down in turn as web sites continue to be larded with advertising junk. Next will be the bandwidth tiering that verizon and other providers are proposing, which will drive traffic to the sites of those willing to pay for better dissemination. And, once transportation is curtailed to slow global warming, attention will turn to the electricity used to run all the current guzzling computers we all use.

I can envision a future in which I ride a bus to the grocery store whilst reading the (Free? I doubt it.) BroJudd newsletter. Just like the '50s.

All best,

Ed

jim:

Easy enough to move things from the train station to the shelf without an automobile based highway ststem. Trucking is just a less efficient mode of transport.

99% of the GIs who reported for WWII got there by rail. It had hardly peaked.

I'm sufficiently Hayekian to recognize that the IHS is the central planning and has had the predictable awful and dehumanizing results.

A newspaper beats the pants off the web.

I don't know how many of you have visited Germany, but it has one of the nicest rail systems on the planet, and still is in a "traffic jam" across 60% of the nation about 60% of the time.

Trains are cheap, Flights are very cheap, Gas is astronomical, and people still drive.

It isn't about Ike or Hitler, OJ. Give people a choice, and they prefer their own little point-to-point domain.

Subsidize it ("free" roads & cheap oil), and it's off to the races.

Re: Brad's "existing right of way" point...

It occurs to me that the Interstate system is a massively underutilized asset. Stick some trains underneath (or above), Pipelines in the middle, (I hear water will be a hot commodity someday) and a "car carrier" system where your car is carried from city to city.

Basically, it's all a failure (or success) of immagination.

Bruno,

The Trans-Texas Corridor is a parallel toll road system, in which the first parallel is to I-35 between Dallas-San Antonio. The ROW is 1/4 MILE wide, and can accomodate not just the road, but passenger railroads, gas/oil pipelines, and even service areas for the roads.

The current existing ROW on most exurban freeways is more than sufficient to accomodate increased lanes of traffic, and those can be tolled. After all, those who benefit should pay the cost.

Any figures on how many of the GIs had to be driven to the train station?

Moving millions of troops in wartime to several locations -- military bases, ports -- was an unique event. Routine passenger-rail traffic peaked in the '30s.

As for replacing cars with choo-choos, just review all the track that was frantically built in the 19th century, when railroads were the new, new thing, kind of like the Internet. Everybody who was anybody cashed in on the rail bubble, including Abraham Lincoln. The bubble burst when most of those lines turned out to be unprofitable. That foreshadowed what would happen on a huge scale when the automobile arrived and long before Eisenhower created the IHS.

For passenger rail to be cost effective, people must live and work in concentrated areas. Period. Absent a Stalinesque relocation program, we'll have differently powered cars before people migrate en masse to Chicago, LA, Boston, or NYC.

jim:

That's the point.

"Ike chose to ape Hitler."

So, is this our Obligatory Nazi Reference for the week?

Bryan:

Darwinist Reference.

the Interstate fully transformed Americans into a car-centric, oil-guzzling, and pollution-spewing people.

Also gave them the knowledge of Good and Evil, and made them ashamed of their nakedness, so that they hid themselves from the Lord.

It's hardly the Original Sin, just a reflection of the evil men are prone to.

Sorry not to have the answers, only the questions. It's up to you young geniuses out there to figure out an entirely new system of roads that will reflect new traffic patterns, new kinds of fuels, new kinds of vehicles, and above all dotting the landscape with new healthy fast food emporia.

Lots of great new things in our future, I wish I could do it all over again.

erp, I'm sure there are lots of great things in the future, but the "young geniuses" are going to make the same type of mistakes prior generations did. Original Sin.

jd, why such a wet blanket? Smile, if for no other reason than it drives the moonbats crazy.