On Jan 29, 11:59*am, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

Those of you who answered movement of military troops within the
continental United States are good on the justification but wrong on
the purpose. It was the height of the Cold War. If you wanted to spend
humongous bucks on internal improvements, you called your program "defense".
The highway bill that authorized interstate highways even had the word
"defense" in its title.

Lots and lots of government spending projects were justified for that
reason during the Cold War. For example, the early computer industry
got a big boost in R&D from government money in the 1950s. IBM's
first public computer, the 701, was largely purchased by defense
contractors using it for various purposes. Many of the era's super
computers were purchased for nuclear research (then and now). MIT/IBM
developed SAGE with govt money, a radar detection system that yielded
many technology benefits.



There were several reasons, among them, break the railroad monopoly on
freight and passenger transportation, another popular myth in America
where the Granger Movement never ended.

Yes, unfortunately for the railroads, the myth of the robber barons
persisted in the 1950-60s and that blocked reasonable fare increases
and unused line abandonments, all for the "public interest". Nobody
bothered to ask who would pay for the "public interest".

For everyday people, riding troop or passenger trains (or local
transit) during WW II was often a miserable experience (due to
overcrowding) and after the war the public had little love for
railroads. This also hurt their cause.

Eisenhower always claimed that he wanted interstates to go around
metropolitan areas and not through them, but major cities and metropolitan
counties had already constructed freeways before the federal highway
bill became law, so it's impossible to believe him. This is the same
guy whose farewell address lamented the power of the military-industrial
complex, even though his administration gave it its power during peacetime.

There were numerous issues where Eisenhower had strong feelings but
was blocked from acting due to conservatives in his own party. While
Eisenhower had tremendous respect as the wartime general, the "true
believers" in the Republican Party at the time still felt he was too
liberal for their tastes. (They despised easterners like Dewey and
Nelson Rockefeller). Their objective was to repeal most of the New
Deal, and Eisenhower did not agree.

By the way, one secondary reason Interstates were developed was
because a recession was looming in the late 1950s and the project
would create jobs.

For reasons I can't understand, when the government builds and runs
roads the conservatives think that is a worthwhile govt endeavor, but
when the govt builds railroads, they think that's evil socialism.


Why cities wanted them is bizarre, aside from the usual desire to spend
massive amounts of money. There was pent-up demand for suburbanization
and sprawl, which had started in earnest in the late '20's, coming to
a screaching halt with the start of the Great Depression. This took the
cork out of the bottle, resulting in dilapidated housing in cities not
being replaced as populations increased in metropolitan areas as a whole
but mainly at the fringes.

As you said, one reason cities wanted them was that it was Federal
money to create jobs, and local govt always grabbed at that and
thought about consequences later, That was a very big reason. Those
union construction workers and their employers were big voters and
campaign contributors. Plus, building highways in that time was seen
as "progress", very important back then. (The auto makers pushed that
image very hard. As mentioned, trains/transit had a bad image.)

Another big reason was that people were going to the suburbs with or
without new highways. It was felt that the new highways would bring
people _into_ the cities from the suburbs and attract new commerce.
Indeed, in the early years it did just that--suburbs were bedroom
communities only and people commuted to the downtowns for work and
shopping. But later commerce and industry moved out to the suburbs.

It should be noted that replacing old housing in older city areas was
not easy to do. In many, many cases cities condemned large areas as
part of 'urban renewal' with less than great results. (However, some
projects were and remain enormously successful.) In many cases,
housing was one of only many problems with urban life that people
wanted to flee-- for example bad city schools were a major motiviator
to suburban flight regardless of transportation.