The Interstates...

I know areas where they built the freeway far away from the city.......the city built up, added more homes and businesses and now the freeway is down thru the city.. (Salem, Oregon)

By the way, David Halberstam wrote an interesting book called " The Fifties" that describes the origin of Eisenhower's road system.

One of my favorite parts is about how Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn, went up in an airplane to survey the planned interchanges and bought land to place his hotels nearby.

We've found that sometimes it's easier, faster and safer to take the older interstate routes straight through the cities. In the middle of the day there's often light traffic and very few trucks.

I agree that traveling through cities on the Interstate may be no fun and does have some problems but I'm old enough to remember earlier times when one traveled through Houstin, Denver, Indianapolis etc. using surface streets and you can believe me NOBODY wants to go back to those days. Especially when you factor in the vast increase in traffic from then and now. I LOVE our interstate system and not many things I'd change about it. Passing through even the largest cities is usually accomplished in less than an hour. Give it a try sometime and jump off and go through on the surface streets and count your time and aggravation. EVEN without the many thousands of others who would be joining you without the system supporting their travels.

The instate was championed by Eisenhower after he saw the German Autobon system in 1919. He felt a high speed road system was needed by our country for the movement of troops and supplies.

One of the major problems with our interstates is that they are supposed to be a "limited access" system, and there are way too many exits and entrances.

Last two months both I20 east and west in Birmingham were closed to replace the bridges. While that was going on someone has the bright idea of repaving 459, the bypass. Talk about a quagmire of traffic.

Dog Folks wrote:
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One of the major problems with our interstates is that they are supposed to be a "limited access" system, and there are way too many exits and entrances.

I don't there is a clear distinction between too many and too few interchanges. The frequency of interchanges varies widely.

The Eisenhower through the west side of Chicago might have too many, with the complicating factor that some are left exits. But the Indiana tollway readily added exchanges in the South Bend/Elkhart area to handle the US20/31 bypass. Tollways in general have less than urban freeways.

On I5 north of Seattle they have added interchanges to accommodate traffic to malls that have been added since the freeway was built. They have also reworked interchanges to eliminate crossing traffic. In a number of cases exiting traffic mingled with entering traffic. In other cases exit lanes were too short, leading to backups on to the freeway.

Any freeway built through a rural area will need to be changed when suburbs grow up around it. Or consider I15 through Las Vegas. That was 64000 people in 1960, and nearly 10x that now. Adding lanes, adding interchanges, reworking interchanges to handle more traffic, are all part of raising the carrying capacity.

gbopp wrote:

robsouth wrote:

gbopp wrote:
That's exactly what my dad told me many years ago.

And, we should have kept our railroad system..:(

The railroad system would be doing fine if not for the interstate system. Put the truck lines in business and put the railroads out of business.

You're right. And the railroads put the canal system out of business. I think we called it progress. :@

That same progress is what is keeping the venture capitalists from funding my mule train and ox cart empire. Get rid of those pesky things with engines and I will be rolling like a big dog in a Georgia cotton field.

Government chartered toll roads have been stealing business from barges since the 1840s (Oregon Trail)
Oregon Barlow Road