Category: Interstate

A whole mode of being: the Interstate Highway System’s legacy in America – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

A whole mode of being: the Interstate Highway System’s legacy in America – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

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The Interstate Highway System’s legacy in America

We’ve already seen how Americans were sold on the Interstate Highway System as it started to connect cities across the country in the Fifties and we’ve seen how, less than a decade later, Americans had already grown weary of the inefficiencies and dangers of personal transportation as a primary and sole means of movement. So perhaps now would be a good time to review just what the country gained – and lost – with the interstates.

As pointed out in “Divided Highways” – a 1997 PBS documentary that takes a comprehensive look at how the Interstate Highway System came to be and relies on interviews with historians, planners, philosophers, columnists, economists, and even Dave Barry and Tom and Ray Magliozzi – the interstates have indeed connected Americans and opened up the country to commerce, exploration, and geographic mobility like never before.

The Interstate Highway System’s legacy in America

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Related – When the highway came to Hilldale: A look at how the interstate system was sold to America

When the highway came to Hilldale: A look at how the interstate system was sold to America – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

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There’s a lot to glean from this half-hour film that the American Roadbuilders Association produced in 1957 to help smooth the road, so to say, for the coming Interstate Highway System. While the traffic scenes early on would make for good carspotting images and the explanation of how the interstates would be laid out–particularly the use of computers to help plan it all–was interesting, it’s what we now know about the highways that reveals the real obstacles the American Roadbuilders Association envisioned in the way of the interstate system’s construction and how it derived Americans’ consent to build the highways.

 

The end of the road :-)

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We spent quite a lot of time in St Louis this morning particularly at the riverfront and the arch. Afterwards we set off on Route 66 at the Chain of Rocks bridge from both the Missouri and Illinois ends, we also visited the famous Ted Drewe frozen custard stand. We alternated between Route 66 and the Interstate and ended up in Naperville at around 9:30pm, tired but happy. We will calculate how many miles we have covered over the past two weeks, a rough estimate at this point is around 2,800 !!! Going to have a rest for the next few days 🙂