Transportation Industry

The year of the interstate

Public Roads, Jan-Feb, 2006 by Richard F. Weingroff

In 2006, the 50th anniversary of "the greatest public works project in history" calls for a celebration--and an appeal for a searching look at the future of transportation.

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One mark of the overwhelming success of the Eisenhower Interstate System is that the American people take it for granted, as if has always been there, like the Mississippi River or the Rocky Mountains. The Interstates are so much a part of the daily life of Americans that most people do not realize that the system they use to get to work, to school, to the mall, and to their vacation destination could be considered one of the "wonders of the world."

In 2006, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), State departments of transportation (DOTs), and transportation partners in the private sector will have the opportunity to remind the American people that the Interstate System is not a natural phenomenon, but rather the result of dedicated men and women working for five decades to enhance the mobility that has always been part of the American dream. Those years of challenge and controversy were also a period of technological evolution, environmental stewardship, and, most of all, commitment to the goal of building the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

In the National Interest

The origins of the Interstate System go back to studies in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 65,000-kilometer (40,000-mile) "National System of Interstate Highways." Within that original mileage limitation, the routes were designated in 1947 and 1955, but in the absence of a national program and a Federal commitment to build the roadways, little was accomplished.

In 1956 the pieces finally fell into place. Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 contained many provisions affecting the Interstate System, the key legislative phrase in section 108 is breathtakingly simple and direct: "It is hereby declared to be essential to the national interest to provide for the early completion of the 'National System of Interstate Highways,' as authorized and designated in accordance with section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944."

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That simple phrase--"the national interest"--is all the justification the legislators who created the bill thought was needed, perhaps because they believed the interest was obvious, widely understood, and shared. They added only that one component of the national interest was "national defense," so section 108 also changed the name of the new network to the "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways." (In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed legislation changing the name of the Interstate System to honor President Eisenhower.)

Of all the bills that President Eisenhower signed during his 8 years in office, he probably put as much of himself into the one that created the Interstate System as any other, and more than most. Unfortunately, he did not have an opportunity to celebrate the occasion with a formal ceremony. The bill was among a stack that he signed on June 29, 1956, his last day at Walter Reed Army Medical Center following surgery on June 7. He made no recorded comment, issued no statement, had no celebratory photo taken. He was said to be "highly pleased."

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One might wonder what his thoughts were as he signed the new law. Perhaps he was just relieved that the job was done, or worried that the job was just beginning. History does not say whether he worried that the men and women who would have the job of carrying out his vision in "the national interest" might falter, but it does reveal, 50 years later, that they did carry out the vision and did so triumphantly.

Adapting to a Different World

If Eisenhower was the visionary promoter behind the Interstate System, Francis C. "Frank" Turner was its spirit. He joined the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) in 1929, and by the 1950s was in position to serve as executive secretary of the committee the President formed, under retired General Lucius D. Clay, to develop a plan for a National Highway Program. He also was the liaison between the BPR and the House and Senate committees as they developed the 1956 Act. Once it went into effect, Turner worked with State highway officials on many of the location and design decisions prior to construction of Interstate highways around the country. He would serve as Federal Highway Administrator (1969-1972), the only career employee to head the agency.

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Turner was a transitional figure, helping the agency adapt to changing demands on the Interstate System as it developed in the context of the eras it passed through. The early Interstates were the best roads built to that date, the product of an evolutionary design process that can be traced through Germany's autobahn (1930s), the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Arroyo Seco Parkway in Los Angeles (both 1940), and the turnpike boom of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Opponents said the early Interstates were produced from a "cookie-cutter" design.