2023-09-22 17:04:55
I-95 is clear of traffic near Hallandale Beach Blvd. as people prepare for Hurricane Irma in Hallandale, Fla. in September 2017. (Mike Stocker — South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
Editor’s note: The following Small Talk column first appeared in the Daily Local News on July 20, 2019.
There is no better way to travel America than along interstate highways.
Whether it’s I-5 on the West Coast (the left coast) or I-95 to the east (the right coast) there’s no way I’d rather burn miles.
Apparently others agree. A quarter of all miles driven in the United States are along interstates.
At more than 47,000 miles long, the interstate system officially began with the 1956 Eisenhower Federal-Aid Highway Act, which established a “national system of interstate and defense highways.”
At 3,101 miles, stretching from Seattle to Boston, I-90 is the longest interstate highway. An historic marker along the way notes that the length of the highway, just in Montana alone, stretches regarding the same distance as New York City to Chicago.
Take I-10 on the Eisenhower Interstate System all the way across Texas from west to east, starting at mile marker 0 near El Paso and you’ll pass MM 880 on the eastern border of the Lone Star State near Beaumont.
My buddy Wild Horse has suggested that it might be possible to travel from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean along 2,460 mile east/west interstate I-10 in a single calendar day.
With the three-hour time change from Eastern to Pacific time zones, and an extra hour added in the fall when the clocks are turned back, a driver exceeding the speed limit would have 28 hours, at an average speed of 88 mph, to make it from coast to coast.
For the most part, the single and double-digit even numbered roadways (I-76, I-70, I-80) travel from east to west and the odd numbered roadways (I-95, I-77, I-5) go north/south.
Three digit interstates starting with even numbers (I-476, the Blue Route) usually wrap around large population centers and odd numbered interstates (I-195) act as spurs, taking motorists into the heart of cities.
You might make a strong argument that the east/west Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76, I-70) or the “Granddaddy of the Pikes,” which opened in October 1940, was the first super highway or interstate.
You don’t need to cross state lines to be considered an interstate. While Hawaii interstates are perfect examples, one of the shortest interstates, the Vine Street Expressway (I-676), at 6.9 miles, carries drivers through both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Oddly, this is one of only a few interstates with no numbered exits. Instead, street names are used.
Not every interstate mile is scenic. Anybody who has driven to Florida would recall the monotony when passing by hundreds of strip malls, fast food joints, South of the Border billlboards and gas stations along I-95.
At my job as tour guide with Ride the Ducks we’d cross high above I-95 at Penn’s Landing.
Philadelphia is packed with superlatives. I’d often tease riders by telling them that this north/south interstate is the most scenic in the country. Sometimes, and sometimes not, I’d clarify and say that maybe I-95 is pretty in northern Maine and southern Florida.
Interstate 40 and I-44 share much of the same roadbed with historic Route 66. Often Route 66 parallels the interstate. Places to get off the main road and ride Route 66 are well marked.
Interstates sometimes determine where people reside. I-95 runs from the Canadian border in Maine to the eastern coast of Florida, while I-75 connects Michigan and the West Coast of the Sunshine State. Partly due to those two interstates, there are more transplanted Midwesterners sunning on Gulf of Mexico beaches and more northeasterners swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.
Interstates run smack dab through the heart of at least three national parks. A park ranger at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in Medoria, N.D., told me that many motorists buzzing along I-94 don’t even realize they’ve visited the park. The same goes for Petrified Forest National Park (I-40) in Arizona. At Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio you are transported high above the national park on a bridge.
The goal of the Eisenhower Interstate System was to connect every American city with a population of more than 100,000.
All but five state capitols — Alaska, Delaware, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota — have easy access to the interstate system.
The cost in 2006 dollars for linking the nation’s major roadways was $425 billion. In October of 1992 the original highway system was completed. We celebrated the massive system’s 50th anniversary of its creation on June 29, 1956.
Interstate cross streets are limited and there are at least two lanes in each direction on interstates. For the most part, opposing traffic is limited to underpasses and overpasses. A very rare red light slows traffic in Center City Philadelphia on the Vine Street Expressway.
During an Army convoy, President Eisenhower took the cross country Lincoln Highway (U.S. 30). He then established the interstate system to easier transport military supplies and to hasten troop deployments in case of emergency or foreign invasion.
Known as the greatest public works project of all time, interstates get us there faster and more efficiently. It just might not seem that way on a long road trip when the white and yellow lines begin to blur.
Even for short distances, interstates often save time and gas. Almost everything we buy rides along in a truck on an interstate highway.
Where would we be without them?
Bill Rettew Jr. is a Chester County resident and weekly columnist. He’s still got visions of interstate route numbers dancing in his head. He may be contacted at [email protected].
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