What was the purpose of the interstate system what was the effect?

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When Eisenhower pitched the interstate system to Congress, he justified the cost of the project as a national security measure, but he knew the real value of the investment was the effect it would have on the U.S. economy in the short and long run. Dissertational research by Daniel Leff Yaffe of the University of California, San Diego estimates that the output effects of building the interstate highway system has had a long-run relative multiplier of 1.8, meaning that every dollar spent on interstates has led to $1.80 of additional economic output. In 1991, one year before its completion, the FHWA issued the final cost estimate of the interstate system at $128.9 billion, over five times the original estimated cost in 1959 — $27 billion — adjusted for inflation. Assuming the long-run multiplier is 1.8, the interstate highway system has generated over $283 billion in additional economic output.

Since the interstate highway system was completed in 1992, the federal government has continued to provide funding for interstates to states through a series of grant programs collectively known as the Federal-Aid Highway Program. Research published in NBER Macroeconomics Annual by San Francisco Fed Economists Sylvain Leduc and Daniel Wilson examined current federal public infrastructure investment and found that federal highway grants given to states boost economic activity in the short and medium term. Overall, each dollar of current federal highway grants received by a state raises that state's annual economic output by at least $2.

Tapping the Brakes

Today, as in the 1950s, the interstate system has critics. For example, some people are calling for the "defederalization" of the transportation system to change the incentives created by its current top-down, federally driven decision-making. In a 2017 working paper, Santiago Pinto, a Richmond Fed economist, examined the economic implications of shifting from an institutional arrangement in which transportation decisions are made in a centralized way to one that gives a larger role to local or regional agencies. He found that in a decentralized arrangement, local transport authorities tend to overinvest in transportation that connects the city's residential areas to local employment centers — compared to a centralized system — but tend to underinvest in transportation that connects cities to one another.

A handful of defederalized transportation authorities, including the Chicago Transit Authority in Illinois, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority in Florida, exemplify Pinto's model of a decentralized transportation authority. "An important contribution of these agencies is that transportation decisions would tend to be coordinated among participants, so they would internalize their impact on the local areas," he says.

Another consequence of the interstate was that many small towns, centered around old state roads and U.S. routes, were left in the dust after the construction of larger interstate roads. These small towns suffered financially after the construction of the interstate because people were able to bypass these towns in favor of the faster route of transportation. One example of a small town negatively affected by the interstate is Peach Springs, Ariz. In the 1880s, Peach Springs was built as a watering station for steam locomotives. The railroad necessitated the construction of train facilities, housing for railroad workers, a terminal, and a hotel. During the next few years, the town's several businesses catered to travelers and railroad workers. Additionally, Peach Springs advertised itself as the first gateway to the Grand Canyon to attract tourism dollars. When Route 66 was built, Peach Springs prospered and built motels, diners, and gas stations to attract travelers. But when I-40 was built in the 1960s and 1970s, it bypassed Peach Springs entirely. Of the 32 active businesses in Peach Springs before the bypass in 1978, only two businesses remain in the town today: a grocery store and a motel.

The development of the interstate highway system led to economic growth, but it has had mixed results for the quality of life for the people who use it. Some argue the time savings from reduced commuting times has translated into additional time for preferred activities. On the other hand, some argue that the time savings from using interstates are reduced or eliminated because of induced traffic from induced highway demand — that is, increasing the supply or quantity of roads makes people want to use them more. Research published in the American Economic Review by Gilles Duranton of the University of Pennsylvania and Matthew Turner of Brown University examined the effect of lane kilometers of roads on vehicle-kilometers traveled (VKT) in U.S. cities. They found that VKT increases proportionately to roadway lane kilometers for interstate highways, and that the sources for this extra VKT are increases in driving by current residents, increases in commercial traffic, and migration. "The provision of roads essentially does nothing for congestion," Duranton explains. "When new roads are built, they fill up very quickly, and travel conditions do not change."

In some respects, the construction of the interstate has played a positive role in U.S. urban areas, despite initially being excluded from early stages of interstate planning. The interstate highways increase mobility in urban areas by reducing travel times for cars, buses, and trucks, while lessening traffic congestion on non-interstate roads. The addition of the interstate also allowed cities to expand their physical size. "In a world where people can only walk or ride a horse, cities cannot be very big, but in a world with widely available transit and cars, cities can grow a lot bigger," says Duranton.

The interstate connected suburban and rural communities to city centers, but it divided and destroyed urban neighborhoods, particularly in minority communities. For example, within the Fifth District, neighborhoods in Southwest Washington, D.C., were sacrificed to construct I-395, forcing those residents to move to other areas. In an article published in 2007 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Nathaniel Baum-Snow of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management studied the effects of interstate highway construction on population in central cities. His results showed that between 1950 and 1990, the population of U.S. central cities in the United States declined by 17 percent, on average, despite the overall population growth of 72 percent in metropolitan areas. His model estimated an 18 percent population reduction for each addition of a new highway though a central city. His findings showed that if the interstate highway system had not been built, central city populations would have grown by about 8 percent, on average, implying highways played a substantial role in suburbanization in the United States.

Today, many cities are reconsidering highway policies that pushed elevated interstate highways through central cities and caused damage to housing, businesses, and neighborhoods. Since the 1970s, at least two dozen U.S. cities have contemplated removing central-city elevated expressways. So far, a few cities have successfully removed or modified such highways: Boston replaced its Central Artery with a network of tunnels, known as the Big Dig; New York's West Side Highway is now a street-level boulevard; and Harbor Drive in Portland, Ore., is now a waterfront park.

Conclusion

In the 65 years since the creation of the interstate highway system in the United States, the growth of the economy and the quality of life and mobility of Americans has substantially increased. Yet the future has turned out to be more complicated than the one presented by Futurama; the transportation arteries presented in miniature in 1939 have delivered challenges as well as benefits after being brought to life.

READINGS

Duranton, Gilles, Peter M. Morrow, and Matthew A. Turner. "Roads and Trade: Evidence from the U.S." Review of Economic Studies, April 2014, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 681-724. (Article available with subscription.)

Herzog, Ian. "National Transportation Networks, Market Access, and Regional Economic Growth." Journal of Urban Economics, March 2021, vol. 122, pp. 1-17. (Article available with subscription.)

Karas, David. "Highway to Inequity: The Disparate Impact of the Interstate Highway System on Poor and Minority Communities in American Cities." New Visions for Public Affairs, April 2015, vol. 7, pp. 9-21.

The Interstate Highway system, the seeds of which were planted in 1944, blossomed in 1956 with the passage of the Federal Highway Act. The bill was lobbied for heavily by a coalition of vehicle, oil, tire, cement, steel, and union interests and ironically, given its carbon footprint, championed by the elder Senator Albert Gore (Lewis 1997). This national system included over 46,000 miles of limited access highway - the largest and most expensive public works project ever undertaken (Kunstler 1993; Kaszynski 2000). The construction process was greatly expedited by the use of standardized designs and advance condemnation of properties along the Interstate right of way (Rose 1979; Kaszynski 2000). Although states participated in the construction of these roads, coordination, oversight, and funding were largely Federal (Vale and Vale 1983). The first sections of the Interstate Highway system were opened less than a year after the bill's passage. The target date for finishing the system was 1969 (Kaszynski 2000) but it took a more than a decade longer before the entire Interstate Highway system was complete. In Vermont, Interstate Highway construction spanned four decades, the late '50s, '60s, '70s and early '80s.

The Interstate Highway system was designed to replace a mix of different road types with a network of multi-lane, limited-access roadways built to a uniform design specification (Kunstler 1993; Hayes 2005). The system was birthed of the Cold War, as the word "defense" in its title, The National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, reveals. Many suspect that Eisenhower's support for the road system was influenced by his war-time experiences with the German autobahn (Dicum 2004) and his difficult, two-month journey across America's primitive two-lane highways in 1919 as part of the War Department's Transcontinental Motor Convoy (Eisenhower 1967). By the late 1920s, a national network of paved two-lane roads was substantially complete (Liebs 1995) providing the first a real alternative to rail and water-based means of travel (Kaszynski 2000). The 1956 launch of the Interstate Highway system was the realization of a planning process for a national, limited-access road system that had begun in 1944, more than a decade earlier (Liebs 1995; Hayes 2005).

Interstate Highways were and are critical to the American economy. Construction of the Interstates followed a protracted period of debate in the post-WWII era (Rose 1979), spawned by increasingly costly traffic jams in urban and suburban areas (Kunstler 1993) caused at least in part by the increasing reliance on trucks for carrying heavy cargo (Rose 1979). Some argued that the automobile culture was the economy and that construction of the Interstate Highway system was a thinly disguised public works program designed to prevent a severe post-war recession or worse, the return of economic depression that characterized the pre-war decade (Rose 1979; Kunstler 1993). Core to the road-building philosophy was the belief that a prosperous society must be a mobile society and that the construction of roads, specifically Interstate Highways, could be a means to remove urban decay and promote prosperity (Rose 1979). The Interstate Highway system, and associated feeder routes, were both heavily subsidized by the Federal government, with 90% of Interstate construction costs picked up by Washington (Rose 1979; Kunstler 1993). With urban roads being the costliest to build, cities received proportionally more Federal funds (Rose 1979). Cars and highways are now a critical part of our economy and our culture. More than 85% of Americans take some form of motorized vehicular transportation back and forth to work (Lewis 1997).

Interstate Highways were designed specifically for efficient and safe travel at high speed. Evolving from the first "modern" roads, the Turnpikes of the 1920s and 1930s, Interstate Highways took this design up a notch in scale and continued the progression of new, highly efficient road networks connecting the largest cities while bypassing rather than accessing smaller towns (Lewis 1997). In contrast to the Parkways of earlier decades, most Interstates were designed with no concern for the adjoining scenery as a means of elevating the traveler's experience. Right of ways grew larger, lanes were wider, slopes and curves were limited, and medians and road-side ditches were extensive and gradually sloped, a safety feature should vehicles leave the road at high speed (Kaszynski 2000; Hayes 2005). With modern mechanized construction and engineering, Interstate Highways are less bound by physical landscape constraints in comparison to routes of the past such as paths, canals, railroads, and smaller, more local roads (Vale and Vale 1983; Lewis 1997). Cut and fill road design, as well as tunneling and deep road cuts into rock allowed Interstate Highways to be built in places where roads could never have gone before (Lewis 1997).

Building the Interstate Highway system caused significant changes to the physical, cultural, and historical landscapes of America (Lewis 1995). Wide right- of-ways consumed thousands of acres of land, led to the demolition of historical structures, and in some locations, replaced existing roadways (Kaszynski 2000). Most significantly, the coming of the Interstate Highway dramatically affected older, general- access roads with similar alignments (Hayes 2005). Traveled at lower speeds and lined by businesses with direct access to the roadway, such roads were characterized by distinct vernacular architecture (think roadside cottage colonies) that connected travelers to the communities through which they passed (Liebs 1995). The construction of Interstate Highways fundamentally altered this pattern of commercial development as long-distance travelers abandoned those former routes leaving once-vibrant towns fading into obscurity and busy roadside stores and restaurants struggling to make ends meet (Vale and Vale 1983; Liebs 1995; Kaszynski 2000). With the coming of Interstate, whole architectural genres were driven to extinction by abandonment (Liebs 1995). Fast Interstate travel also sounded the death knell for short-haul train travel (Kaszynski 2000) and completed the process of intimately linking Americans to the personal auto for local and regional transportation (Hayden 2004).

New roadside development near Interstate Highways was focused at interchanges because design of these limited access highways prohibits businesses from having direct access to the highway itself (Lewis 1995; Liebs 1995). Such interchanges are unique to highways and have evolved into three-dimensional engineered structures quite distinct from the grade-level junctions of traditional roadways (Hayes 2005); the goal is to keep traffic moving and with cloverleaf designs no-one ever needs to make a left turn across traffic (Hayes 2005). With so little space available around the interchanges, land there became extremely valuable limiting the diversity of business to only those with deep pockets: oil company gas stations, shopping malls, national and regional chains (Liebs 1995). The result - uniform, cookie-cutter architecture replaced regionally distinctive vernacular designs (Kunstler 1993). Perhaps it's no coincidence that the rise of the destination shopping mall (usually located at a highway interchange), the demise of Main Street, and the construction of the Interstate Highway system all occurred in the same 25 year period (Kunstler 1993; Lewis 1995). The automobile and the roads it required, clearly shaped the built environment of 20th century America (Liebs 1995; Hayes 2005). The "Galactic City" of Lewis (1995).

Over the last century, American society has reorganized its culture around the highways and byways and its vehicles need (Vale and Vale 1983; Liebs 1995; Hayden 2004). Some would argue that the Interstate Highways both encouraged and were the result of the commuting lifestyle, the loss of a land ethic, and the divorce of the workplace from the home (Kauffman 2004). What would once have been an intolerably long commute on winding country roads became doable on the Interstate, psychologically opening up huge tracts of agricultural land, now within driving distance of American cities, for development (Kunstler 1993; Lewis 1995; Boynton 2004). In urban areas, Interstate Highway construction destroyed entire neighborhoods (Kaszynski 2000) and isolated others, creating physical ghettos (Kunstler 1993). Installation of continuous sound barriers protected neighborhoods from the roar of thousands of cars passing at high speed but completely blinded drivers to the local visual geography; they might as well have been driving through tunnels (Hayes 2005). In less developed areas, the impact was different. Over time, Interstate Highways have become connectors of suburbs (Lewis 1997) and rural small towns. Wherever they may be, highway travelers are isolated from local landscapes and cultures on many Interstate Highways even the services motorists need are provided only at limited access service areas.

Interstate Highways changed people's perceptions of the landscape. With uniformity of road design allowing for long-distance travel between major cities at high speeds (Vale and Vale 1983), travel on an Interstate Highway is a landscape-blurring experience, far less intimate and more homogeneous than travel on secondary roads. On the Interstate, the driver's focus is on the road and distant, sweeping views; details are lost and the landscape passes as a kaleidoscope of images allowing only broad comparison (Vale and Vale 1983). Clearly, the function of most Interstate Highways is not to entertain the traveler but to get people as quickly as possible from point A to point B (Kaszynski 2000). These are roads to serve motorists and traffic (Rose 1979). Some blame America's loss of historical and geographical perspective directly on construction of the Interstate Highway system because it distanced people from the landscape both by speed and limited access (Liebs 1995). The Interstate's standardized, homogenized design (and the homogeneity of development that followed the roads) have been implicated directly in the "blanding of America" (Kaszynski 2000).