Part 5: The Road Ahead

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of CR4's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. We began on Monday, with "A Giant Nationwide Engineering Project", continued on Tuesday, with "Roots of the Roads", rolled on Wednesday with, "The Politics of Passage", and celebrated Thursday with "Adventures in Civil Engineering".

In September 1991, the residents of Wallace, Idaho held a mock funeral for a traffic light. After 30 years of delays, road crews completed a $40-million bypass that redirected traffic from the center of town and removed the last stoplight from I-90, an east-west interstate that connects Boston, Massachusetts to Seattle, Washington. As Wallace residents listened to the sounds of bagpipes, a horse-drawn hearse carried the famous traffic light to its final resting place, the Wallace Mining Museum. In the words of City Councilman Mike Aldredge, "Like the whippet and the buttonhook, the iceman and the lamp lighter, the livery stable and the company store, cruel progress has eliminated the need for the services of our old friend."

Although some residents of Wallace may disagree, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System has improved life for millions of motorists. Today, the work that Congress authorized under the original Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is largely complete. Although state highway departments continue to repair roads and rebuild bridges, the era of big public works projects may be over. The Highway Trust Fund is sound, but support for higher fuel taxes is politically untenable in an era when oil costs over $70 a barrel. At 18.4 cents per gallon, the federal gas tax has not been increased since 1993. So what is the future of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System? What new projects, if any, should the federal government - or private interests - undertake? Is the Highway Trust Fund adequate, or does America need to re-engineer the way that it pays for its roads? Finally, what lessons can advocates of new infrastructures learn from the past fifty years? The future of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is linked to changes in the nation's demographics. Most of the proposed roads are located in the South and West, regions of the United States with the greatest population growth. In Texas alone, there are 61% more cars on the road today than in 1980. In 2005, Congress approved funding for I-3, a north-south road to connect Savannah, GA and Knoxville, TN; and for I-22, an interstate connection from Memphis, TN to Birmingham, AL. In the aftermath of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, plans for I-14 would move motorists away from heavily-damaged I-10 and from Natchez, MS to Augusta, GA. In the West, advocates of I-7 and I-9 seek to alleviate traffic congestion in central California near Stockton. Highway planning for the eastern United States includes I-67, a highway that would shorten the drive from Toronto, Canada to the southern United States.

Trading alliances and technological capabilities are also shaping the future of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. In fact, plans for a so-called "NAFTA Super Highway" are already underway. In 1993, Congress passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating a $6 trillion trading block between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Two years later, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) awarded I-35 "high priority corridor status" and millions of dollars in federal funding. According to groups such as North America's SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO), the controlled-access highway would span the length of four football fields and run from the Mexican border at Laredo, TX to the Canadian border at Duluth, MN. Shipping containers from Asia would enter North America through Mexican ports and travel northward by truck, crossing the U.S. border in special, high-speed lanes that are checked electronically. At the first stop, the Kansas City SmartPort, containers would be transferred to trucks headed east and west.

Construction of the first Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) segment of a NAFTA Super Highway could begin as early as next year. According to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the TTC will "incorporate existing and new highways, railways, and utility right of ways." Although southern portions of I-35 are suitable for projected transportation demands, the construction of a "multi-use transportation alternative" to the west of I-35 is necessary in more congested areas. Over the next 50 years, TxDOT will build separate lanes for passenger vehicles and large trucks while adding high-speed commuter railways and transmission lines for telecommunications services. Unlike other parts of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, the TTC will be largely designed, funded and managed by private companies such as Cintra-Zachry, which signed a $3.5 million planning agreement in March 2005. Toll booths and private/public partnerships are, according to TxDOT, part of this new approach.

As with other road-building projects, advocates of the TTC and a NAFTA Super Highway face opposition from across the political spectrum. Although road construction in Texas is not front-page national news, stories about high fuel prices, hybrid cars, illegal immigration, and the privatization of services can help shape public opinion and mold Congressional will. Already, proponents of a "National Broadband Network Infrastructure" have learned valuable lessons from the building of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. In March 2002, David H. Deans briefed the Economic TeleDevelopment Forum about the political challenges that lay ahead. "Eisenhower's advisors didn't cloud the public debate with how wide interstate highways should be," Deans began, "instead, they espoused the social and commercial benefits made possible by this underlying infrastructure development program." The builders of tomorrow's roadways can learn much from the last 50 years.

Resources:

http://www.icfdn.org/publications/blurredborders/40definitions.htm

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497

http://www.answers.com/topic/proposed-interstate-highways

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060615083120337

http://www.rppi.org/texashighwayfinance.shtml

http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/highway.htm

http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=180

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/byday/fhbd0912.htm

http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=180

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/01/26/358835/index.htm