highways -- circa 1957

Frances Bolton (PHI) fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu
Fri Aug 21 18:29:10 PDT 1998


How lucky for you to be in NJ. Was the article talking about interstates or highways? I tend to think of highways as state roads. In his biography of Robert Moses, Robert Caro has an interesting bit on highways. He was writing about the roads on Long Island (or, as they say in NJ and as I said until 11 months ago, Lawn Geyeland)that went to the beach. When they were local road only, traffic was terrible, all the people from NYC wanting to go to the beach on wekends. When they put in the first highway, traffic remained horrible because fewer people were dissuaded from taking the trip. Every time a new highway was built, it immediately became congested with traffic because everyone flocked to them.

There were also economic and "cultural" repercussions. Take the example of Route 66. it was a wonderful, scenic, road with motels, restaurants, cool roadside attractions (see the 2 headed pig! the albino monkey!). Lots of little towns along the road that were supported by the people traveling through. When the interstate system was built, no one took route 66 anymore, even though it was more fun. Most of the businesses and towns died. All those roadside attractions--gone. A few years ago, I rode through parts of what's left of Rt 66. Not much. No more roadside attractions, now you have to go to Disneyworld or Six Flags.

Frances

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Les Schaffer wrote:


> I was out of town on business today. had breakfast at a lil place off
> Interstate 80 in new joisy. The walls of the restaurant were lined
> with old Saturday Evening Post covers. pretty cool looking back
> through time this way.
>
> anyway.... there was one cover, from i think june 1957. and one of the
> lead articles was called something like: 'highways -- why they're not
> working out'.
>
> So, what happened back when i was 3 years old?
>
> of course, i can guess: the interstate highway system was some
> massive, federally funded extravaganza that purportedly was built __in
> response to__ an anticipated need but actually was built in order to
> encourage car ownership, suburbs, interstate commerce, etc ?????
>
> but what happened that caused, at some point, the perception that the
> system wasnt 'working out'?
>
> any elders out there?
>
> --
> ____ Les Schaffer godzilla at netmeg.net ___| --->> Engineering R&D <<---
> Theoretical & Applied Mechanics | Designspring, Inc.
> Center for Radiophysics & Space Research | Westport, CT USA
> Cornell Univ. schaffer at tam.cornell.edu | les at designspring.com
>



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