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Troubled Interstate System Celebrates
an Anniversary
But funding, maintenance and growth
issues cloud future of America's freeways
By Mark J. Shaw, Editor-in-Chief
I'm not big on nostalgia, especially
about decades like the 1950s. Cigarettes, urban sprawl, hula
hoops and the Cold War aren't much to glow about. But even
cynical Boomers like me, born smack in the middle of Dwight
D's Age of Complacency, can appreciate one of his most important
legacies-the final step in the creation of the nation's Interstate
highway system.
I say "final step" because
Eisenhower didn't do it alone. Planning for the Interstates
actually began in the late '30s, at the end of the Great Depression,
and continued into the early '40s when FDR set up the National
Interregional Highway Committee to study how to build a national
expressway system. The committee's report, issued in January
1944, supported the creation of a 34,000-mile system with
5,000 miles of auxiliary routes.
Throughout the '40s, the feds continued
to refine the system, but war priorities didn't allow it to
be funded. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1952 authorized
a token $25 million a year for the system, but it wasn't until
Eisenhower pushed for enactment of the Federal Aid Highway
Act of 1956 and the creation of the Highway Trust Fund that
enough money became available to start building the Interstates.
The system eventually was expanded to cover more than 43,000
miles, and thousands of grateful contractors set to work to
make it happen.
Contributing writer Bruce Buckley talked
with several AGC contractors whose companies were part of
the original Interstate teams. He reports on the challenges
they faced in building a national transportation network where
none had been before.
Many contractors, like Neil McMurry of
the Rissler-McMurry Co., Casper, Wyo., say that Interstate
projects either built or saved their companies. Rissler-McMurry
received its big break in 1962 with a $3-million project on
I-80 in Cheyenne-the largest project ever awarded in Wyoming
at the time.
J.D. "Doug" Pitcock, one of
the founders of Houston-based Williams Bros. Construction
Co., says: "Our modus operandi from the very start was
built on the American love affair with the automobile. As
long as people want to drive, they will demand a place to
drive, and we'll be building highways."
Buckley also examines the current state
of the Interstates and their troubles, brought on by the usual
suspects-funding, lagging maintenance, growth and congestion.
In its most recent report card on the
infrastructure of America, the American Society of Civil Engineers
gave the country's roadways a grade of D+ and called for new
solutions to the issues of inadequate funding and poor maintenance.
Buckley outlines some of those possibilities in his story,
including adding more toll lanes, using smart technology,
encouraging extended lease agreements for some roads and bridges
and establishing new partnerships.
In a separate story in this issue, Denver's
T-REX project illustrates many of those solutions-an unusually
successful highway-transit partnership, strong transit-oriented
development and creative funding-to reinvent a transportation
corridor and connect key business sectors of the city. The
project is a good place to look for solutions to today's transportation
problems.
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