Wow. That seems like an utterly one-sided and simplified explanation of how we got our highway system.
The article is telling me that the auto industry hoodwinked the government into building a multi-trillion dollar highways system (in today's dollars) just to support the auto industry?
I think the situation might be a tad more complex than that.
The interstate highway system was basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities. Why are the highway overpass heights standardized?[1]
Your text here and the link you gave don't say the same thing.
As http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#quest... comments, the interstate highway system was primarily civilian in naure. It was not "basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities".
The link you gave says, "Besides the obvious economic reasons, one of Eisenhower’s goals was to improve national security". That does not imply that Eisenhower’s main goal was related to nuclear weapon transport, only that national security was one of multiple factors.
In any case, this sounds like an urban legend. Indeed, at Straight Dope's comment board, some people tried to investigate it, at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-2955... . The military needs to transport many things, including tanks. What evidence is there that missile specifically drove the need, vs. more general military transport requirements?
I say "missiles" because the SAC connection doesn't make sense. The size of nuclear weapons or their transport systems can't be the deciding factor. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_6_nuclear_bomb , was the main nuclear weapon in the early-1950s. It was much smaller than a tank, and shorter than most people. The Mark 17 and Mark 24, which were thermonuclear, were a bit bigger, but still less than two meters tall. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb . The next generation of nuclear weapons were smaller still. By 1960 we had the W47, which was 18 inches/460 mm in diameter and 47 inches / 1,200 mm long.
The first US nuclear ballistic missile was the Atlas, first launched in 1957 and planning started in 1954. Construction for the interstate system was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. It is possible, timing-wise, that the needs for the Atlas drove the size requirement for the US highway system. But it's tight, and it sounds unlikely.
For what it's worth, this image of a Minute Man II on transporter, http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/mimi/images/fig1... , implies that it needs no more than 5 meters of clearance. The interstate system requires that a minimum of 4.9 m clearance (except in urban areas when there is an alternate interstate around the area), so it certainly seems like the Minute Man transporter was designed for the highway system. It's not clear that the highway system was designed for the needs of the missile system.
There are many urban legends about the US highway system, such as the false belief that it was designed as an alternative landing strip for SAC bombers. This means there's a higher evidentiary standard than normal for statements like yours.
That's a separate issue from how the interstates interface with cities. Interstates outside of city centers are fine (see European cities). The destruction of the human-scale urban fabric is the primary concern.
yes, the interstate system was built under eisenhower, the ex general. similar to the reconcfiguration of paris to promote military transport in the 19th c. the point being you need to improve route 66 era roads to handle modern industrial transport. the interstate system is really not a passenger-car centric piece of infrastructure in many ways.
The sad thing is that I'm not sure America even has many cities, at least, not real ones. Perhaps I'm biased by having lived in southern California too long but it seems like everywhere but the densest parts of downtowns are just vast seas of parking with a building sprinkled here and there. It's pathetic. I lived in Dublin for a few years and if it were built like a US city half the downtown would be surface parking for the two major sports stadia. Of course, it's not, because European cities aren't pathetic dumps.
(Usual exceptions made for cities that existed before the car like SF and NYC, though even SF is surrounded by suburban hellscape).
That article was on HN recently, and I recall it doesn't prove out any of the points it claims in the intro paragraphs. Nearly every city it alludes to being gutted is thriving. Detroit is basically fallen over, of course, but blaming the highway system for that is fairly disingenuous.
Mostly, the article just rabble rouses a bit by pointing out connected people used their power to stop highways they didn't like. I guess that's true, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the idea that America's cities are gutted.
Of course, as you can see by my sibling comment, very few people let a little truth get in the way of populist emotional resonance.
>Nearly every city it alludes to being gutted is thriving.
What do you mean by "thriving"?
The cities that have nice walkable urban centers avoided their destruction via highway. NYC and Boston stood up to their interstate plan. SF's Embarcadero fell down in an earthquake and they wisely didn't rebuild it, which then created a desirable waterfront.
>Detroit is basically fallen over, of course, but blaming the highway system for that is fairly disingenuous.
Urban planners (the people most knowledgeable on this subject) would not call this "disingenuous". The cities that are most prosperous and desirable in this country are dense without highways cutting through them. People want walkable environments with 24/7 activity, not just buildings peppered throughout parking lots.
In Detroit's case they cut through downtown with highways to easily connect them to the suburbs. This also meant adding parking lots. When new buildings were built, the code required a certain amount of parking. This ease of mobility allowed "white flight" to the suburbs. This reduced the amount of people living downtown along with amenities, reducing rent which reduces taxes. Detroit also never annexed its suburbs, so the tax base was reduced even more.
It's basically a textbook case of what not to do. Live by the car, die by the car.
Though Boston did still have an ugly elevated highway separating neighborhoods that was only eliminated by the enormously expensive and disruptive Big Dig.
I blame a weak government that can be influenced by outside monetary pressure and lobbying. I also blame ignorance and prejudice against minorities and the poor.
The fact is The Big Three plus the oil industry has a lot more monetary influence than urban planners and architects.
In general, it makes a lot of sense to reuse existing right-of-ways if those right-of-ways aren't needed for their original purpose anymore. (Though they are sometimes wide enough that additional transportation modes can added along-side.) But to your point, if you look at old maps a lot of railroad lines are now highways (a few are rail trails) although in some cases current rail lines and highways co-exist.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cit...