Our Growing Interstate System

I have an old National Geographic (February 1968 -- Vol. 133, No. 2) that talks about the Interstate Highway System in America. It is pretty interesting to see. According to the article ("Our Growing Interstate Highway System"), 65% of the 41,000-mile system was completed as of Feb. 1968. It was scheduled for completion in 1975. "Nationwide, 750,000 pieces of property are being claimed for right or way under the power of eminent domain. Owners usually accept the amount that appraisers consider fair market value. Boards of appeal and the courts are open to those who are dissatisfied."

It is a very lengthy article, but I typed out a small part of it that I find fascinating. I love to read about some of the "cutting edge" ideas of 1968.

Robert Paul Jordan article: Our Growing Interstate Highway System
Signs alone along the Interstates will cost some $200,000,000. Many run more than $10,000 each; particularly large ones, suspended from trusses across several lanes, can cost up to $35,000. One gargantuan example, to be built over the Long Island Expressway in New York City, will cost nearly $50,000.

All signs must be highly visible, understandable, and uniform. Traveling at 60 miles an hour, you cover 88 feet a second, which gives you about 11 seconds to read and interpret a sign 1,000 feet away.

It should be sufficient time. But I have taken enough wrong turns on Interstate Highways to conclude that "signing" is an imperfect art. Surprisingly, federal highway planners agree with me; indeed, they say that signs themselves are obsolescent.

Within a year or two the Bureau of Public Roads will test -- at a cost of three to five million dollars -- an electronic system designed to supplement signs and even road maps. Already successfully demonstrated by manufacturers, it allows a motorist to insert a card coded for his destination into a device in his car. Thereafter, electronic checkpoints beside the road -- each with its own computer -- pick up signals from the car and instruct the driver where and when to turn. Of course, such a system is years away.

Meanwhile, for safety, many states are replacing rigid highway signposts with breakaway signs. When struck by speeding cars, the posts fly up and out of the way, minimizing the impact and resultant damage. Safety tudies by the Texas Transportation Institute led to development of these signs, which are now required for all new federal-aid highway construction.

The institute, along with other groups, also is seeking ways to soften collisions with fixed objects like bridge abutments. Crash-easing devices being studied include foam-plastic barriers, 55-gallon drums stuffed with tin cans, and containers filled with water.

Other devices are in the offing. The head of the country's newest Cabinet department, Secretary of Transportation Alan S. Boyd, described some of them for me: "Multilevel highways -- with trucks using one level, cars another -- will become commonplace in cities. And within a decade I expect dramatic breakthroughs in development of a cheap, useful electronic automobile for local use."

The Cabinet Member charged with overseeing what President Lyndon B. Johnson has called "the web of Union" went on to outline how a simple arrangement of lights on the rear of a car can indicate speed changes to the following driver, reducing spacing by a third. Electronic sensors in roadbelts will signal drivers -- through devices installed in cars -- when they may safely pass other vehicles on curves, hills, or narrow roads.

Still, congestion promises to get worse before it gets better. "I'll speculate," the Secretary concluded, "that within five or ten years we may have to book starting times on some major highways, just as golfers now arrange tee-off times on crowded greens."

It was a pretty expansive article overall, well-balanced in looking at the "benefits" of highway building and some of the problems that urban areas had already encountered thanks to the "power of eminent domain." It is interesting and informative, if a little fantastic at times. I checked National Geographic's site for an online copy of the article to link to, but they didn't have one, unfortunately.