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History’s greatest public works project
On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower affixed his signature to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and launched what is universally regarded as the greatest public works project in history. For the traveler, the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways is a marvel of convenience. But it’s much more—for starters, a blueprint for discovering this vast and remarkable country of ours.
The Interstate system has touched every American. For some it is through direct experience traveling or working along the routes. For millions more, the linkage comes from the countless products we use which have traveled on the Interstate system.
The system has made our nation the most mobile in the world, and it has become a vibrant backbone in our continuously expanding economy.
A remarkable legacy
Historians agree with Ike’s assessment that beginning what would become the Interstate Highway network was one of his most important achievements in two terms as president.
In August of 2005 President Bush signed a new piece of legislation helping states upgrade the nation’s network of roads, bridges and mass transit systems. Among the benefits of the new law will be reduced traffic congestion and help to keep our highways the safest in the world.
A wry footnote to this story—and sober testimony to how much things have changed since the 1950s—is the fact that the original 1956 bill was a mere 29 pages. The new act weighed in at just over 800 pages.
A few Interstate facts
The States own and operate the nearly 47,000 (46,876) miles of the Interstate Highway System. They set rules for operation on the highways, including speed limits. The Interstate highways have always been assumed to be safer, and statistics bear that out. One measure of highway safety is the so-called “fatality rate.” It is the number of deaths per 100 million miles traveled. In 2004 the rate for Interstates was 0.8, compared to 1.46 for all roads.
The Interstate System cost approximately $130 billion to build. That number is a far cry from the original estimate of about $30 billion, but early estimates were flawed in several ways. And then there’s the issue of estimating a huge project spread over decades of planning and construction. It is interesting to note that President Eisenhower actually favored a network of toll roads financed by bonds. Aides, however, convinced him that most corridors would not have sufficient traffic volumes to repay bondholders with interest.
The first section of Interstate was a section of U.S. 40 in Missouri’s St. Charles County. It was later renamed the I-70 Mark Twain Expressway. It was begun on August 13, 1956.
Numbering? I knew you were going to ask about that. Shortly after the enactment of the 1956 bill, bigwigs from the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) and the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) put their heads together and decided that the latter group should apply numbers to the Interstates as they had for U.S. numbered highways.
So the model previously used for U.S. numbered routes became the prototype for Interstate numbering—with some differences. The AASHO’s Executive Secretary, A.E. “Alf” Johnson, set out with plan in hand and started attaching numbers to the Interstate map. His plan was approved by the BPR in 1957.