Happy Birthday Interstate System
(published in the Missoulian, 7/96)
Well, let's wish a happy 40th birthday to the Interstate Highway System. It's been a good 40 years. And it's been a bad 40 years. It all depends on whether your ox got gored or your ox got fed. The recent self-serving paean to the Highway Engineers (Missoulian, 7/X/96) gave the view of someone whose ox definitely got fed. The author even trotted out the old yarn about how President Eisenhower pushed the Interstate System through as a "national defense" measure.
Sure. National defense. That's why building Detroit's freeways meant destroying more than 20,000 homes. It's why in Baltimore, one out of every five African-American families lost their home to make way for the interstate. It's why all over America, freeway construction helped destroy inner-city neighborhoods and populate the countryside with suburbanites who could afford to flee the problems their interstates helped create. And it's why in places like San Francisco people rose up and stopped major highway projects to save their communities. If the highway builders created the interstates for "national defense," it makes me wonder who's nation they were defending.
Ultimately, 44,000 interstate miles were built and, to be sure, the system has its benefits. But many of those who celebrate the completion of the system (and we'll be hearing more from them over the next few months) do so as part of an agenda. They want to build more of the same. A lot more. More interstates and more (and bigger) highways in general.
Amid this growing din, it's worth keeping a couple of things in mind. For example, few people seem to understand just how deeply transportation decisions affect land use patterns. Make no mistake about this: towns like Stevensville and Dillon would never have been built in the Highway Age. These communities grew up during older times, times when walking meant something, when zoning codes didn't require endless acres of off street parking, and when "density" wasn't a dirty word.
To see what the Highway Age has brought, look at the dusty 5-lane strips that lead into almost every Montana city. Look at the franchise ghettos that grow up around every new interstate interchange. Look at the downtowns struggling to survive. Look at the sprinkling of new houses that dot what just a few years ago was open land. And look at the miles of abandoned railroad lines that used to serve a purpose. To see the effects up close and personal, try walking Missoula's 93 Strip or the Reserve Street Corridor. Doing so, you'll feel like a space alien: definitely not welcome and way out of place. Then walk around downtown and think about the difference.
Quite simply, highway builders don't know how to build good communities and they don't seem to see the ripple effects caused by their work. They build a 5-lane road and, voila, the kids can't walk to school safely. They build an interstate interchange and, voila, there goes the tranquility of the cemetery. They build the last section of I-90 and, voila, downtown Wallace cowers forever in its ominous shadow.
While it would be unfair to blame highway designers for all the ills
of modern America, it would be equally unfair to give them free reign to
shape our communities and the landscape to their high-speed traffic-serving
desires. And as the highway lobby cranks up its PR campaign touting the
breathtaking glories of the Next Interstate Era, the boundless joys of Highway
Travel, and the evils of Progress Denied, let's keep reminding them that
transportation should serve the people and foster community. When it supplants
either, it does little but lasting harm.