Interstate Highways at 50

A week or two ago, the U.S. began celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System. "Celebrating" is perhaps too strong a word for what is actually happening. The observance includes a cross-country trip recreating Dwight Eisenhower's cross-country trip in 1917 that eventually led him to propose the system; a few feature spots on network television; and some newspaper articles, including an opinion piece in the New York Times Magazine.

This is as it should be. The results of the Interstate experiment are mixed. The network is badly in need of repair in many places. And the long-term future of cross-country driving will soon be in question anyway—or should be. The celebration should be muted, if there is to be any at all.

The Interstate system is the single largest public works program in history, dwarfing the Great Wall of China and the many federal projects of the Great Depression. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else. Most countries are too small to build roads on this scale, and those that are large enough, like China, have until recently lacked the funds and the will to build an equivalent network. Considered solely as a large-scale construction project, the Interstate System is a remarkable achievement.

Those who celebrate the Interstate point to its role in building commerce, connecting the different regions of the U.S. with each other, providing jobs, and similar benefits. Critics notice that the Interstate system has often destroyed city neighborhoods, facilitated suburban sprawl, and in many places led to larger and larger traffic jams despite incessant expansion of the system. It seems that, with roads as with the Field of Dreams, if you build it they (the cars) will come. And keep on coming, until the road is a slow-moving parking lot.

The conventional solution to traffic jams is to build more roads—which promptly fill up with more cars. It is no accident that in the country with the largest system of roads and highways, including the Interstates, per capita automobile usage is the highest in the world. Or that per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. are greater than in most other developed countries.

In the long run, the Interstate Highway System, for all its virtues, may well be seen as a mistake. It is interesting, and rather depressing, to speculate on what the U.S. might have become had it spent the cost of the Interstates improving railroads and developing ways of moving people and generating power that used energy more cleanly and efficiently. We did not do that, and our failure to use our resources wisely in the past will make the future that much more difficult.