"Let's break out the confetti!"
Interstates play heroic, villainous roles in U.S.
June 26, 2006
Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2006
In "Cars," the No. 1 movie in the U.S. this month, the villain of the computer-animated piece is an unnamed interstate highway.
The interstate, if you haven't seen the movie, with ruthless efficiency has bypassed an old Route 66 town and left the cute vehicular residents of Radiator Springs lonely and bereft. James Taylor even sings about how the interstate done them wrong.
This has to be considered lousy timing (and typical Hollywood claptrap) from the standpoint of the highway industry, which is engaged in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 47,000-mile interstate system. Well, kind of. The anniversary is not of the beginning of interstate construction, or even of the end (which technically hasn't occurred yet), but rather of the signing by President Eisenhower on June 29, 1956, of a 29-page bill with a chill-bumps-inducing name: the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
Woo-hoo! Come Thursday, let's break out the confetti!
Maybe not. The interstates, undeniably, have been a major factor in the country's economic growth these past few decades and gotten us places a heck of a lot faster. Picture going from Austin to Fort Worth on old U.S. 81 and all the stoplights in Round Rock, Georgetown, Temple, Waco and Hillsboro.
The interstates also required displacing a lot of urban dwellers in the largely poor neighborhoods they cut through; memorialized in concrete the existing racial and class divisions within communities (like Austin); bisected farms and ranches; and are, by and large, unattractive. And, oh yes, they bypassed and ruined the economy and spirit of many small towns.
So it's a mixed bag, perhaps worthy of neither celebration nor condemnation. We needed bigger, faster roads, and there was a cost.
Anyway, from a purely Texas standpoint, the timing of the anniversary is pretty interesting as well. Because if Ike's signing of the bill signified a change from the past — federalizing highway construction in a big way by guaranteeing that Uncle Sam would pick up of 90 percent of the tab for the new freeways — what's happening around here represents just as dramatic a departure from the past.
Gov. Rick Perry and company want to build a 4,000-mile intrastate system in Texas, and they're pretty far along the planning road on the first leg paralleling Interstate 35. The departure, as I'm sure most of you are aware, is that you'll have to pay to drive it (Eisenhower rejected a push to have tolls on the interstate system) and that it will be built and run by a private company. It will help the economy, speed travel, bypass towns, be unattractive — and cost you $20 or more to get to Dallas.
Kind of puts the nasty ol' interstates in a whole new light, doesn't it? Maybe when they make "Cars V: Open Range" the bad guy will be the Trans-Texas Corridor system, the heroes will live along that blessedly toll-less strip of asphalt running through Salado, and 90-year-old Randy Newman will croak out the schmaltzy theme song, "Free to drive, on I-35."
Feel free to use the idea, Pixar. No charge.
Getting There appears Mondays. For questions, tips or story ideas, contact Getting There at 445-3698 or bwear@statesman.com.
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© 2006 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com
June 26, 2006
Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2006
In "Cars," the No. 1 movie in the U.S. this month, the villain of the computer-animated piece is an unnamed interstate highway.
The interstate, if you haven't seen the movie, with ruthless efficiency has bypassed an old Route 66 town and left the cute vehicular residents of Radiator Springs lonely and bereft. James Taylor even sings about how the interstate done them wrong.
This has to be considered lousy timing (and typical Hollywood claptrap) from the standpoint of the highway industry, which is engaged in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 47,000-mile interstate system. Well, kind of. The anniversary is not of the beginning of interstate construction, or even of the end (which technically hasn't occurred yet), but rather of the signing by President Eisenhower on June 29, 1956, of a 29-page bill with a chill-bumps-inducing name: the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
Woo-hoo! Come Thursday, let's break out the confetti!
Maybe not. The interstates, undeniably, have been a major factor in the country's economic growth these past few decades and gotten us places a heck of a lot faster. Picture going from Austin to Fort Worth on old U.S. 81 and all the stoplights in Round Rock, Georgetown, Temple, Waco and Hillsboro.
The interstates also required displacing a lot of urban dwellers in the largely poor neighborhoods they cut through; memorialized in concrete the existing racial and class divisions within communities (like Austin); bisected farms and ranches; and are, by and large, unattractive. And, oh yes, they bypassed and ruined the economy and spirit of many small towns.
So it's a mixed bag, perhaps worthy of neither celebration nor condemnation. We needed bigger, faster roads, and there was a cost.
Anyway, from a purely Texas standpoint, the timing of the anniversary is pretty interesting as well. Because if Ike's signing of the bill signified a change from the past — federalizing highway construction in a big way by guaranteeing that Uncle Sam would pick up of 90 percent of the tab for the new freeways — what's happening around here represents just as dramatic a departure from the past.
Gov. Rick Perry and company want to build a 4,000-mile intrastate system in Texas, and they're pretty far along the planning road on the first leg paralleling Interstate 35. The departure, as I'm sure most of you are aware, is that you'll have to pay to drive it (Eisenhower rejected a push to have tolls on the interstate system) and that it will be built and run by a private company. It will help the economy, speed travel, bypass towns, be unattractive — and cost you $20 or more to get to Dallas.
Kind of puts the nasty ol' interstates in a whole new light, doesn't it? Maybe when they make "Cars V: Open Range" the bad guy will be the Trans-Texas Corridor system, the heroes will live along that blessedly toll-less strip of asphalt running through Salado, and 90-year-old Randy Newman will croak out the schmaltzy theme song, "Free to drive, on I-35."
Feel free to use the idea, Pixar. No charge.
Getting There appears Mondays. For questions, tips or story ideas, contact Getting There at 445-3698 or bwear@statesman.com.
Statesman Top Jobs
© 2006 Austin American-Statesman:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Monday, June 26, 2006
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