Listen to part of a lecture in a history class.

P: Usually in most countries, the responsibility for building and maintaining highways falls to the central government. That hasn't always been the case in the United States, however. Initially, individual states were responsible for building their own roads. So the state of California built California roads, the state of Texas, Texas roads, with each state responsible for its own roads. It's not surprising that many highways in the United States were quite poor, even after the arrival of the automobile.

S: Roads weren't centrally planned. Their dimensions weren't standardized or regulated. Many were plain inadequate, some no more than dirt roads, and because they'd been constructed using low-quality materials, most weren't built to last. Today, if you were to drive across the United States, umm, in terms of the time it takes, you're probably looking at... S: We did it in four days with my parents taking turns driving.

P: That sounds about right, but in the 1920s that same trip would have taken you two months. In fact, there's a famous story about Dwight Eisenhower, long before he became president of the United States. Dwight Eisenhower was a young army officer in the 1920s he was involved in a military convoy that crossed the entire United States, and he was astounded to discover the trip took 62 days.

P: He subsequently became a leading spokesperson for expanding the nation's highway system. By the middle of the 20th century, there were about 60 million cars in the United States, and this dramatic rise in car ownership was a critical added pressure. The United States was becoming a country of drivers.

When Eisenhower became president, he signed legislation to expand highway system, a public works project of this amplitude had never been undertaken before, and some in the government weren't convinced it was a priority. But finally, in 1956 construction began on what officially became the Interstate Highway System. Now the name Interstate Highway System is significant here, because these new highways, or interstates, cut across state lines and constituted a truly national highway system crisscrossing the country from end to end.

S: And were the different states okay with this?

P: Hardly. the interstate was an extremely divisive political issue. In fact, the political challenge was just as great as the engineering one. Until this point, the individual states had authority to build roads how they saw fit. It wasn't easy to reach a compromise between the states and the national government. And then there was the question of who would pay for all of this? S: The States probably didn't want to pay if the control was being taken from them.

P: There was a lot of discussion in the end. Construction of the highway system was primarily funded by the national government, usually collected through a tax on gasoline. The government also funneled additional funds to the states for maintenance of the roads. The whole project was very ambitious. Some of the new roads crossed the width of the entire continent.

The first of these, stretching from San Francisco to New York, was several years behind schedule when it was finished, and most of the interstate highways that were completed at that time had been built to earlier standards, with earlier estimates of traffic density in mind. So paradoxically, a lot of the highways were out of date even before they were finished.

Still, the interstate system was a really impressive accomplishment. It eventually included tens of thousands of kilometers of accessible, durable highways. All were built to uniform standards, using concrete reinforced with steel. These new highways were homogenous and predictable regardless of what state they were in.

S: But these new roads, didn't they bypass some smaller towns that used to get more traffic? And wasn't that bad for local economy? P: A lot of studies have been done on that, and it's hard to quantify. Businesses that specifically serve travelers. Motels, for example, do seem to lose business when more traffic is rounded around, rather than through towns.

But as much as I sympathize with the people that were involved in these businesses, well, good infrastructure, like an efficient road system, is essential for the overall economic growth of a country. And actually, by some markers of economic health, such as employment rates, small towns don't appear to have been affected so significantly.