The Surprising Design of Market Economies by Alex Marshall

Author:Alex Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2012-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

A SOCIALIST PARADISE: THE AMERICAN ROAD SYSTEM

Well if you ever plan to motor west,

Just take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best.

Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six.

Well it winds from Chicago to LA

More than two thousand miles all the way.

Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six.

“(GET YOUR KICKS ON) ROUTE 66,” LYRICS BY BOBBY TROUP, 1946

The song “Route 66” is homage to American individualism and the joys of the open road. Few may realize that it is also homage to American socialism, and the possibilities of individualism and freedom that such socialism permits. For Route 66, that winding ribbon of pre-interstate highway that runs from Chicago through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and into California, is a product of government action, its asphalt and right-of-way paid for by the various states on its path, with help from the federal government. It was not an easy task and is emblematic of the decades-long work to construct a national road network. It’s also emblematic of the tortured relationship Americans have with government. Most important, it’s an example of how individualism and government are not in conflict. In fact, the latter can empower the former.

FROM WAGONS TO TWO-WHEELERS

The history of Route 66 is entwined with the history of the early roads movement, which is, like all major chapters in American history, a fierce and internecine struggle among competing visions and interests, full of boosters, do-gooders, hucksters, and wheeler-dealers. It’s a history that has largely been forgotten, overshadowed by the creation in the 1950s of the Interstate Highway System.

In the 1920s, though, the idea of a cross-country highway was a new one, or at least one long dormant. Under President Thomas Jefferson in 1805, Congress approved and funded the development of a National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River, to Wheeling, West Virginia (then, of course, still in Virginia) on the Ohio River. It was designed to create a wagon road between the all-important river routes of the Potomac and the Ohio Rivers, where new settlers were coming. Even though the US Constitution states that Congress shall have authority to establish “post offices and post roads,” the idea of an interstate road was still a new one, and Jefferson secured permission from the three states the road passed through, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Eventually plans were approved to build the road all the way to St. Louis on the Mississippi, but the road petered out a few miles short in the 1830s as first canals, and then railroads, undercut the road’s raison d’être.

BICYCLING TO THE FHWA

A half-century later, a curious thing would bring roads back to a national agenda: the bicycle. In the 1880s and 1890s, the new “safety bicycle,” with two wheels the same size driven by a chain, was all the rage. It was not just a toy. It was a personal transportation device of enormous efficiency and relative speed. But there was one problem. Bicycles travel poorly on muddy, bumpy, unpaved, or cobblestoned streets. The League of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.