The interstate highway system is a wonderful thing, a model of efficient transportation – at least when it’s not offering compulsory free parking.
It is something we take for granted now, a part of our daily lives, but this may be just the time for the road system to play an important part once again in our strategic thinking.
Its legislative origins go back to the Depression era and the Roosevelt administration. But as a practical matter, the interstate highway system had its roots in national defense. That’s how Congress and the taxpayers were persuaded to pay for it.
We never would have had this road system without the support, energy and action of President Eisenhower. As a junior officer in 1919, he had been part of a U.S. Army team that drove across America from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, a trip that took two months of navigating mud-or-dust county roads.
Decades later, as a senior officer and head of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, he had the opportunity to see the effectiveness of the German autobahns, which allowed the fast and efficient movement of troops and military supplies.
Elected as president in 1952, he believed the United States needed the highway system as part of its national defense – not only to move troops and material to where they might be needed, but also to evacuate cities in the event of an attack. He got Congress to appropriate billions to the project, which took 27 years to complete and produced 42,000 miles of high-speed roads.
Fortunately, the attacks we were worried about in the 1950s and 1960s never materialized, and as a result, it was the economic impact of the road system that was felt most strongly. Interstate highways proved to be a fierce competitor to the nation’s rail and air transportation systems.
The nature of the threat to the United States has changed since the Cold War ended, and the highway system hasn’t been a big part of our thinking about anti-terrorism and security issues.
But if we consider part of the homeland security issue to be a strategic problem of balancing our economic growth and prosperity against our dependence on foreign oil, the system becomes a significant factor. Moving freight efficiently around the country is a vital part of our current and future economic growth, and any energy plan simply has to deal with that.
One plan promises to reduce our oil consumption by half. Experts tell us that if we built airplanes, cars and trucks out of lightweight, high-tech materials, we could continue our flying and driving habits and still reduce oil consumption by 52 percent.
But this plan has one flaw: trucks. We need the trucks for our economy, and while we can reduce the weight of the cab, the engine and the trailer, there’s not much we can do about the cargo. Nobody is going to eat high-tech, lightweight fruit or potatoes. Thirty pounds of Fujis or Yukon Golds weigh the same whether they are hauled in a light-weight truck or a heavy one. And that does more than put a limit on how much we can reduce fuel consumption in trucks themselves. Part of the problem with freight-hauling trucks is that they “don’t play well with others.” They simply weigh too much to mix it up safely in high-speed traffic. Surviving collisions is tough enough now, but if we cut the weight of passenger vehicles in half, or by two-thirds, it won’t be a pretty sight.
To take advantage of our weight-loss program for passenger vehicles, somehow we have to separate the heavies from the lightweights, just as air traffic systems do (jet airliners don’t play well with light planes, either). If we don’t, consumers are simply not going to purchase lighter-weight vehicles. Most people today purchase SUVs not because they need their rugged, off-road capabilities, but because the added height, weight and overall bulk give them a sense of security.
To keep freight and passengers separate, we are going to need a massive and costly re-engineering and expansion of our highway system and, ultimately, other high speed roads as well. When balanced by the increased homeland security that comes from greater energy independence, the investment will turn out to be worth it.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant.
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