Red Barns to Road Rage

While I was licking on popsicles in the local grocery, the construction of the interstate system in Wisconsin was well underway. Years before I had a driver’s license, more than three-fourths of the state’s interstate system had been built. Nowadays, as I cross the first section of the interstate to be constructed, back in 1956 (between Goerke’s Corners and CTH-SS in Waukesha County), and continue on to work, I wonder about those days....

Two years before construction was begun on the first stretch of the interstate in Wisconsin, President Eisenhower made it clear that it was important to “protect the vital interest of every citizen in a safe and adequate highway system."  The resulting Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, opposed in the Senate by only one Senator from Louisiana, who opposed the gas tax increase included in the bill, ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars) and as we are well aware, maintaining that system has become increasingly difficult.

Not included in that cost, however, was the twinned dynamic of urban sprawl and the decline of our cities, as they sustained losses in tax revenues and experienced increasing stratification. Also not included in that cost was the’ undercutting’ of our mass transit systems. Not included in that cost was the need to engage in a never-ending cycle of easing congestion, only to find ourselves ever more congested as we continue sprawling outward.

For example, a new bypass along the CTH-SS corridor in Waukesha County is being considered as one proposal for connecting I-90 and Hwy 59 along the west side of the city of Waukesha. What we seem not to realize is that for every bypass we build to ease traffic congestion, we eventually increase traffic congestion as more motorists commute to other suburbs and city centers from farther and farther afield.

The senator from Louisiana might not recognize our countryside or our cities, however he would feel right at home resisting funding mass transit systems, especially inner city mass transit systems, with user fees and what could be called, ‘decongestion’ fees, such as an increased gasoline tax and taxes on tire and equipment sales.

President Eisenhower might well bemoan what he would see now. Years before becoming a proponent of the interstate highway system, while on the US Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the not yet President Eisenhower “experienced all the woes known to motorists and then some – an endless series of mechanical difficulties, vehicles stuck in the mud or sand; trucks and other equipment crashing through wooden bridges; roads as slippery as ice or dusty or the consistency of ‘gumbo’….”

The irony is, that even as our suburbs blend more and more into each other and the remaining red barns are giving way to named developments, those of us commuting from the suburbs are finding more and more of our day spent dealing with the ‘woes of being motorists,’ with ‘it’s a parking lot’ and road rage replacing mud, sand, wooden bridges, and roads the consistency of ‘gumbo’.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
http://www.wisconsinhighways.org/interstates.html
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_highway.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400461.html
http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/federal-aid-highway-act/