The Future of the Interstate Highway System
Figure 18. Interstate Highway System
The last time America had a national vision for transportation was when the Interstate Highway System was launched in 1956. What the country’s national leadership asked for was a national system of direct, high-speed highways that would link principal metropolitan areas, agriculture and industrial centers; serve national defense; and connect with Canada and Mexico. The system was designed to include routes that would reach all sections of the country and form a complete network that would attract and serve greater traffic volume than any previous system. What it got was a system that did that and more.
Although the Interstate at 47,000 miles represents only 1 percent of total system mileage, it carries 24 percent of all traffic and 41 percent of combination-vehicle truck traffic. It is a strategic system of arterials which performs well. But it has meant far more to our economy and way of life than its designers could have imagined.
The Interstate Highway System was a technological breakthrough which increased productivity and transformed the country in ways not anticipated. A safer, 65 mile-per-hour system was overlaid onto a less safe, less well-maintained 20 to 40 miles per hour system which previously existed in urban and rural areas. National, multi-state, regional, and local economies were all empowered to reorganize to take advantage of new capabilities. The quantum change it brought about has been compared with the railroads of the 19th Century which also more than doubled speeds and capacities of connections between places, and the jet aviation system of the 20th Century which tied together the nation and the world for business and leisure travel.
Regions that were not part of the nation’s economy became integrated through new opportunities to have longer distance links to goods movement and for personal travel. Look what has happened to the south and west over the past 50 years. Urban areas were able to expand and grow, enabling more agglomerations of industries and skills with much larger urban boundaries. Metropolitan areas now generate over 80 percent of jobs, growth, and development.
The Interstate Highway System has made significant contributions to U.S. productivity growth. During the 1950s, the contribution of highway network investments to annual productivity growth was 31 percent. It averaged 25 percent in the 1960s, and by the 1980s the net social rate of return on highway capital was 10 percent, about equal to rates of return on private capital.
The Interstate System enabled the U.S. economy in the last half of the 20th century to develop within a much larger envelope of potential size and productivity. However, as the capacity and the performance of the current Interstate Highway System are used up, this will reduce the Interstate’s ability to support the increased productivity the United States will need to compete in the global economy.
Greater supply chain productivity and lower logistics costs have been critical to U.S. economic growth. From 1980 to 2003, the cost of transportation was cut in half because of infrastructure improvements making U.S. goods globally competitive. (Figure 19.)
The central question is what needs to be done so that the Interstate System of the future can continue to play its role as a strategic national highway network with the ability to move 24 percent of all traffic and 40 percent of truck freight traffic with acceptable speed and reliability.
Figure 19. Reducing Transportation Costs by Half Has Kept the United States Globally Competitive
Congress has asked the Commission to make recommendations for the future of the Interstate System for 15, 30, and 50 years into the future. To do this, we believe the Commission should study the history of the Interstate System to see what can be learned, compare that with forecasts of the challenges ahead, and consider the recommendations of AASHTO and other organizations regarding what will be required for the Interstate System of the future.
History Provides Lessons for the Future
The story of the Interstate often begins in 1937 when President Franklin Roosevelt called the Chief of the highway agency to the White House, mapped out his ideas for a cross-country, high-level road system, and asked for an evaluation. Soon after, Congress also requested an assessment of such a system to be funded through tolls. The response was the 1939 report, Toll Roads and Free Roads which supported the concept of a national system, but indicated that funding it through tolls was unfeasible. During World War II, studies evaluated system alternatives based on population, vehicles, agricultural output, manufacturing output, military needs, and existing travel. Finally, in December 1944 the Federal-Aid Highway Act authorized a 40,000-mile system of Interstate roads:
“…to connect principal metropolitan areas, cities, and industrial centers, serve national defense, and connect with Canada and Mexico.”
The Bureau of Public Roads, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), and the states began a joint effort to designate the now legislated system, and in 1947 a report was issued showing the general location of an Interstate System of 37,700 miles including 2,900 miles in urban areas with the remaining miles reserved for additional urban routes.
The Funding Mechanism
The Interstate System called for by Congress in 1944 and identified in 1947 made little progress until a dramatic series of studies and Commissions created by President Eisenhower stimulated action. In late 1955, Congress rejected the concept proposed by Eisenhower’s Clay Committee that Interstate Highways be financed through bonds. However, between Eisenhower’s persistence and visionary members of Congress who developed a way to fund it, the proposal came up for action the next year.
Part of the coming together included decisions on where the final urban Interstate mileage would be allocated. The Bureau of Public Roads and the State Highway Departments, in cooperation with cities and counties, had been working on this and a series of “yellow books” which showed the location of the remaining urban mileage that had been held in reserve in 1947. It all came together in 1956 when the financial piece: new taxes, “pay-as-you-go” funding, a 90–10 Federal/state match, cost-to-complete funding, and the Highway Trust Fund, were re-enacted by Congress.
The Future of the Interstate Highway System (continued) >>
