Highway System

Highway System. The American highway system is a creation of the twentieth century. Before 1916, roads remained a local responsibility. Bicyclists and railroad executives lobbied for better roads in the 1890s, and by 1910 the automotive industry echoed those demands. Reflecting many elements of the Progressive Era reform movement (especially central administration by technical experts), the Federal‐Aid Highway Act of 1916 created the first national road system, funded by fifty million dollars over five years for construction of rural roads for mail deliveries. Consistent with federalism, the bill mandated cooperation between state highway departments and the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR, later the Federal Highway Administration). Thus states designed, built, and maintained the roads, while federal engineers inspected and approved plans, specifications, and construction. Initially costs were shared equally, although BPR engineers always exercised greater influence than this fifty‐fifty balance would suggest, owing to their superior technical expertise.

In 1921, as automobile traffic increased, the post‐road program gave way to federal authorization of a national network of primary and secondary roads between cities. As first planned in 1923, this federal‐aid road system totaled 169,000 miles—some 7 percent of the nation's highway mileage. Under a numbering scheme adopted in 1925, U.S. 1 followed the Atlantic coast while U.S. 2 paralleled the Canadian border. Federal appropriations averaged about $75 million annually during the 1920s, and the gasoline tax, introduced in Oregon in 1919 and dedicated to road construction by some state legislatures beginning in the 1930s, provided matching state funds. System additions began with extensions into urban areas (1938), followed by secondary roads (1940) partially built with federal aid. The final addition to the highway network, the Interstate system, was authorized in 1944. The states and BPR first designated routes in 1947, although special funding began only in 1954. Massive appropriations for the 42,500–miles National System of Interstate and Defense Highways came in 1956, with the federal government assuming 90 percent of the estimated cost of $25 billion.

This network altered many facets of American life, facilitating the development of a mobile culture and the rise of standardized national fast‐food and motel franchises. Long‐distance family summer vacations spent in campgrounds or motels became common, and long‐haul trucking replaced railroads as primary freight haulers. The decline of central‐city business districts, the “malling” of America, rapid suburbanization, and new patterns of land use all resulted in part from easy access to express highways after 1950.

While few government programs were as popular as road building, the scale of Interstate highway construction inside cities engendered significant resistance from neighborhood groups and early environmentalists after 1960. A “Freeway Revolt” made headlines and its partisans won numerous court cases, halting Interstate construction projects in such cities as San Francisco, Boston, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. Although several disputed freeways were eventually completed in the late 1980s, the momentum for road construction was lost. Even so, the federal‐aid system in 1997 encompassed 957,544 miles out of the national total of some 3.9 million miles of roads and highways. Annual appropiations for this system alone increased from $5 million in 1916 to $75 million in 1925, $585 million in 1954, and $20.8 billion in 1997. Highway spending at all levels of government surpassed $60 billion that same year.
See also Bicycles and Bicycling; Mass Marketing; Motor Vehicles; Roads and Turnpikes, Early; Route 66; Shopping Centers and Malls; Tourism.

Bibliography

Bruce E. Seely , Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, 1987.
Mark H. Rose , Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939–1989, rev. ed., 1990.

Bruce E. Seely