Dec 4, 2009
Transportation for $1000
This is the longest Interstate highway in the country.
What is I-90?
That is correct
Transportation for $1,000.
This famous World War II general’s name is given to the nearly 47,000 mile system known as the Interstate Highway System.
Who is General Dwight D. Eisenhower?
That is correct.
Despite our familiarity with the nation’s highways, few of us could make money on Jeopardy in this category. Sure, we know the jokes about I-5, the highway OJ introduced to non-Californians, being a parking lot and the never ending road construction around major cities like Atlanta. However, for the most part, we just enter and exit our great highways without giving a thought to the truly amazing network of roads that connect us as a nation. It is a resource we often take for granted.
Born in 1964, I am thankfully too young to remember the family trips to upstate New York from our small town in southeastern Ohio before we were connected directly to the interstate system. My dad tells me that it seemed to take as long to get to the highway using a series of winding state routes as it did to complete the rest of the trip north once on the highway. My dad knows a lot of pre-interstate stories since he is old enough to have helped his family buy their first family car.
The emergence of the nation’s highway system did more than shorten the trip to grandma’s house. These roads directly contributed to and helped shape the nation’s socio-economic development for the better half of the last century. Right up until the internet and hyper-globalization hit, no infrastructure change had been more influential in determining the geographic distribution of the domestic economy and the location of population centers than the elaborate Interstate Highway System that crisscrosses and connects our nation.
With such good roads, it is not surprising that the US has the highest per capita car ratio in the world—nearly one per person—which is 40% higher than Europe. On average, we drive eight times more miles than we fly. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that we have sufficient, quality roads to get from place to place. In fact, car travel is so convenient and enjoyable in this country that it has become part of our national psyche. GPS may have replaced the Triptik, but the Road Trip continues to be an American pastime for all ages.
Since 1950, we have also been spreading out, moving farther and farther from the main cities. Undoubtedly, the construction of the multi-lane beltways has invited this migration from urban to suburban living. The Brady Bunch would have never settled on the outskirts of town without a highway for Mike to get to work.
Some may view this type of suburban growth as energy wasting, anti-environment sprawl; however, overcrowded cities are not necessarily more energy efficient or any easier on the environment. And, they are certainly not good for humans. Having fought the traffic for more than a dozen years in Port au Prince, which has grown from a quarter million people to three million in twenty-fives years with only one main road added during that time, I can vouch for that.
Haiti is not alone in this problem. Countries that lack sufficient roads typically have people-choked, overcrowded cities, rather than evenly distributed populations. The economies of these countries are typically centralized in the mega-cities. This causes people to abandon the countryside and continue to flood the already overburdened, bulging cities. We are fortunate to have a network of roads that allow for the more even distribution of people and economic activity in this country.
President Obama has pushed re-investment in the Interstate highways as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. To date, $20 billion of the earmarked $26.6 billion has been committed. Not bad, but there is no need to hesitate on the remainder—and maybe even more should be put forward in the future. History has proven that the initial investment in our roads urged by Ike has paid off handsomely. Besides paying down the debt and increasing the affordability of alternative energy sources, roads are probably the next best use of our cherished tax dollars. Immediate jobs and long-term infrastructure improvements are a powerful one-two punch.
And just for the record, I-90 is only 121 miles longer than I-80.