How did Americans develop their love affair with driving?
Visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington and the transportation exhibit “America on the Move” will sell you on the commonly held theory that when Henry Ford made cars affordable, Americans loved them and demanded more and more highways.
Of course, that exhibit is sponsored by General Motors, which donated millions to put its name on the collection.
But University of Virginia history Professor Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in American cities” says that’s a myth. Just as outgoing President Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, Norton says an automotive – construction complex took over our country, paving from coast to coast.
Sure, Americans like their cars. But it was a conspiracy of economic interests that turned us into a car culture. Where cities once enjoyed a network of cheap, fast streetcars, GM, Firestone and the oil companies bought and wiped them out, replacing them with buses and cars.
“This country destroyed and rebuilt its cities in the 20th century to serve automobiles,” says Norton. And those same interest groups are alive and well today in Connecticut.
Groups like “Move CT Forward” aren’t pro-transportation as much as they are pro jobs… their jobs, in construction. And they’ve spent a lot of money lobbying in Hartford to keep their members, the unions and contractors, busy. While I’m happy they’re promoting transportation, their motives are hardly altruistic.
This is nothing new, says Norton. The original interstate highways built in the 1950’s used Portland Cement because that company lobbied so hard for its product over cheaper asphalt. And now that rusting rebar and crumbling cement is costing us a fortune.
Another myth from that era was that President Eisenhower built the interstates to move troops quickly for national defense. That may have been the pitch to Congress, but the real reason for the highways was to evacuate civilians from the big cities in the event of nuclear war. Lucky we never had to test that idea.
Last August when hurricane Harvey hit Houston… the most urbanized highway city in the country… authorities didn’t even try to evacuate people because they knew more would die on congested roads than in the storm.
Who pays for all this road building? You do, in the form of income taxes and, yes, gasoline taxes. But Norton says gas taxes are hardly a fair way to pay for all this.
Why does the motorist driving on a dirt road pay the same gas tax as one driving I-95? The costs they place on road maintenance, the environment and our stress levels are grossly different, so why isn’t the cost?
“It would be like having Best Buy selling everything by the pound. People would flock to the electronics (our crowded interstates) instead of the towels,” he notes (though I’m not sure Best Buy even sells towels, but I take his point).
He reminds us that before the interstates, the nation’s first “super highways” like the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the New Jersey Turnpike were built not as freeways but toll roads, and they still are today.
Driving may seem to be free, but it isn’t. And until we ask drivers to pay for its real cost there is no incentive to do anything but drive (and pave) more.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media.
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