Speaker 1: Hello, Stuff you should Know listeners, if you want to
Speaker 1: come see s Live, You've only got a couple of
Speaker 1: more cities this year that still have tickets, and that
Speaker 1: is Orlando in New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando
Speaker 1: on October nine at the Plaza Live, and we'll be
Speaker 1: in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night
Speaker 1: October t and friends like Chuck said, you better go
Speaker 1: get your tickets. Go to s Y s K live
Speaker 1: dot com for info and ticket links and everything you
Speaker 1: need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and the three
Speaker 1: of us are um going riding on the Freeway of
Speaker 1: Love and a pink Cadillac. There's no looking back. Jack.
Speaker 1: Who is that Aretha? Yes? A good song for later
Speaker 1: stuff for sure. That and then knew you were waiting
Speaker 1: with George Mike Leving. Come on, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: doesn't hold up to me for the against like the
Speaker 1: stuff from the sixties and seventies. But you're like, it's
Speaker 1: no Zeppelin. I'm just talking about Aretha's earlier work. I know,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. I felt like I would
Speaker 1: have liked to have seen her sing with Zeppelin. That
Speaker 1: would have been neat. Yeah, what what would have it? Songs?
Speaker 1: She would have song? I don't know, But how about
Speaker 1: a whole lot of love? A whole lot of love?
Speaker 1: We'll go with that one. All right, We're getting in
Speaker 1: to get to reanimating Aretha and John Bonham mm hmmm, alright, Chuck,
Speaker 1: enough of this. It's high time that we got to
Speaker 1: talking about the United States Highway Interstate system. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love this stuff, are you too? You know? I was like,
Speaker 1: what is it about this that I do love? Because
Speaker 1: I've been meaning to do this one for a really
Speaker 1: long time. And I guess it's the fact that it's
Speaker 1: a huge mass of public works. That's where it gets
Speaker 1: civil engineering. We kind of have a thing for civil engineering,
Speaker 1: don't we. I think so man like subways and bridges
Speaker 1: and like all that stuff seems to delight both of us.
Speaker 1: But then also the other thing I like about it
Speaker 1: that really kind of came to the to the fore
Speaker 1: through this research is the enormous impacts, both like good
Speaker 1: and bad that this huge, massive, sweeping public work project
Speaker 1: had on on America and still has today like just
Speaker 1: completely restructured America inside and out. Yeah, and this also
Speaker 1: makes me want to do a commission a piece on
Speaker 1: the suburbs. Yes, dude, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a big one to unpack and commission
Speaker 1: a piece. I'm glad you said that because this was uh,
Speaker 1: this is based on an article written by the great
Speaker 1: egg Grabanowski, the Grabster. That's right. So um, we should
Speaker 1: probably say what we're talking about. If you've never been
Speaker 1: to the United States, or if you've never been out
Speaker 1: of your house and you live in the United States,
Speaker 1: the America has um a really extensive system of roadways,
Speaker 1: like really really fast, really well designed interstates. That's what
Speaker 1: they're called. They're highways, their expressways, speedways, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call them. But they connect every major city in
Speaker 1: the United States to every other major city in the
Speaker 1: United States. You can get anywhere from anywhere, and there's
Speaker 1: something like forty eight thousand plus miles of interstate just interstate,
Speaker 1: not not highways, not by ways, not roads. I think
Speaker 1: that comes to something like a hundred and fifty thousand miles,
Speaker 1: but there's like forty eight thousand miles of just this
Speaker 1: incredibly well engineered, well constructed, super fast UM road artery
Speaker 1: system cardiovascular system for cars in the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of what looks like sometimes on a map.
Speaker 1: For sure. It's like a central nervous system for the US.
Speaker 1: So shall we go back in time a bit? Though?
Speaker 1: I think we should, but we had to lay down
Speaker 1: while we were talking about first in complete UM contrariness
Speaker 1: to the standard s Y s K. Fan. That's right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's go back in time, Chuck. So we're going
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the twentieth century here and
Speaker 1: at the time roads in the United States, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, roads outside of the major, major
Speaker 1: urban centers. Uh, they had a little bit better roads,
Speaker 1: but the rural roads were not good by any standard.
Speaker 1: They were dirt roads. So when it rained, and we're
Speaker 1: not even talking gravel roads, we mean literally dirt roads, um,
Speaker 1: which seems like a catch all tern but a gravel
Speaker 1: road is much much better than a dirt road because
Speaker 1: I've lived on both. Oh fancy, man, you lived on
Speaker 1: a gravel road. Yeah, growing up, had a gravel road
Speaker 1: until I was like ten or eleven they paved it.
Speaker 1: When did you live on a dirt road before they
Speaker 1: put gravel down? Okay, so you looked on the same road,
Speaker 1: but it was a dirt road once and then so
Speaker 1: I think when they put the gravel down, that's called
Speaker 1: an improved road. Yeah, I went from dirt to gravel
Speaker 1: improved two paved, which I and I said this on
Speaker 1: one episode, but I remember very distinctly they paved it
Speaker 1: after my whole life going up that gravel road. It
Speaker 1: felt like we were driving on putting. Oh. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was so smooth and weird and we felt so modern.
Speaker 1: So so you grew up on a road back in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, chewing tobaccy and working in the mines,
Speaker 1: Is that is that where you grew up? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: it was the seventies. But it was just a dead
Speaker 1: end road. It wasn't a big neighborhood, which talked about before.
Speaker 1: I bet that was a pretty big difference in um
Speaker 1: in in feeling. When you had it paved, it was
Speaker 1: really weird. But rural roads at the early twenty century
Speaker 1: were dirt and when it rained, it was terrible mud.
Speaker 1: And then when that dried up. There were terrible ruts,
Speaker 1: and it was not the biggest deal at the time
Speaker 1: because cars were still pretty new and we're very much
Speaker 1: for the rich. But the horse and buggy and the
Speaker 1: horse drawn carriage did not enjoy these roads either. Sure No,
Speaker 1: and then um, another mode of transportation, the bicycle, actually
Speaker 1: created something called the better roads movement. Good roads, good
Speaker 1: roads movement. I like mine better. Yeah, you got good,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't we rather have better? Sure in the meeting,
Speaker 1: let's think old timey folks. So um, the good roads
Speaker 1: movement was was created by bicycle enthusiasts who said, like,
Speaker 1: these you know, dirt track, muddy roads aren't gonna work
Speaker 1: for bikes. And when people started using automobiles, especially like
Speaker 1: you said, wealthy people, at first they were like, these
Speaker 1: bike people are onto something. I'm a car guy, but
Speaker 1: the same apply. So let's kind of adopt this good
Speaker 1: road movement and we're gonna start agitating for better roads.
Speaker 1: And those better roads are, like you said, just laying
Speaker 1: down a layer of gravel was a vast improvement over
Speaker 1: what they had before. Yeah, and there was also UM
Speaker 1: legislation in for what's called rural free Delivery RFD. Mail
Speaker 1: because at the time, if you lived in the country,
Speaker 1: you went and picked up your mail, they didn't bring
Speaker 1: it to you. It seems appropriate, and so in they
Speaker 1: finally passed legislation that said, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: get mail to people, and that was a big part
Speaker 1: of improving the roads as well. They're never gonna find
Speaker 1: out about Circuit City's newest sale if we don't get
Speaker 1: them their mail out in the out in the rural sticks.
Speaker 1: That's right. So, um, there are people agitating for road improvement,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was it was kind of
Speaker 1: take and on by the wealthy people who owned cars, um, industrialists,
Speaker 1: philanthropist benefactors. This is all like within the first twenty
Speaker 1: twenty years of the twentieth century, I think, um, where
Speaker 1: clubs were formed where they said we're going to take
Speaker 1: over responsibility for improving roads and just basically getting things
Speaker 1: up to snuff so that um, you know, we can
Speaker 1: drive our cars on these things. And I think they
Speaker 1: did it fairly locally at first, but by the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Highway was built, and that was the first transcontinental highway
Speaker 1: that was basically built four cars. Yeah, I went from
Speaker 1: Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And it didn't just carve it out of you know,
Speaker 1: barren earth. That used a lot of the roads that
Speaker 1: are already there, improved on those connected stuff together. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a dude named Carl G. Fisher. Did you
Speaker 1: look into this guy. Yeah, he was an entrepreneur from Indiana,
Speaker 1: real estate mogul and really big time auto slash auto
Speaker 1: raceing enthusiasts who had a way of marketing and like
Speaker 1: drumming up support for stuff like this. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was big time into racing cars. But he had
Speaker 1: like such severe stigmatism. He had like coke bottle glasses.
Speaker 1: But he's still raced cars and um, he actually set
Speaker 1: the record, the land speed automobile record. He made it
Speaker 1: around a two mile. He made it around a track
Speaker 1: two miles on a track in two minutes. Broke the record.
Speaker 1: That's not a joke. That's adorable. It is. It's pretty cute,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, he had he had the calm down.
Speaker 1: He took five days for his nerves to you know
Speaker 1: stabilize after that top speed. But he was the champion
Speaker 1: of this highway, of the Lincoln Highway. Um, it became
Speaker 1: famous for you know, kind of like Root six sixty six,
Speaker 1: We did an episode on that, Um, Lincoln Highway was
Speaker 1: notable for its famous roadside giants and attraction and things,
Speaker 1: just like Root sixty six was yep, so then um,
Speaker 1: but still there was this idea that that private groups
Speaker 1: of auto enthusiasts were kind of the ones who are
Speaker 1: responsible for taking care of roads or designating highways, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And this group called the American Association
Speaker 1: of State Highway Officials now it's the American Association of
Speaker 1: State Highway and Transportation Officials. They sound like this very um,
Speaker 1: legal important group, and they are, but they're not an
Speaker 1: actual like government group. They're non government organization that basically
Speaker 1: started and I think nineteen fourteen saying we're in charge
Speaker 1: of saying what the best practices are for roads, what
Speaker 1: roads should be made into highways, And they managed to
Speaker 1: basically insinuate themselves in between the government and the highway
Speaker 1: system and said, hey, these roads should be highways. Why
Speaker 1: don't you go fund and improve these these roads right
Speaker 1: here in the government said sure, we'll do that, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of how we started to get our first
Speaker 1: highway system. Yeah, so they were nineteen fourteen. Then two
Speaker 1: years later the Federal Aid Road Act came along to
Speaker 1: provide funding, and I guess future libertarians started to weep
Speaker 1: because the public couldn't take care of their own roads anymore,
Speaker 1: or maybe they were sad because it came clear that
Speaker 1: the public taking care of its own roads was not
Speaker 1: a workable solution for the future. So they had to
Speaker 1: rely on the federal government to come in and they did.
Speaker 1: And this this group, uh, as you said, now, the
Speaker 1: A s h t O. Not only did they designate
Speaker 1: highways and connect cities, but they said, you know, you
Speaker 1: should get funds, this road should be improved. We need
Speaker 1: to get a numbering system, we need to get signage
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And we'll get to the numbering system.
Speaker 1: But the basics of it are that highways are numbered
Speaker 1: in reverse order from inner states, because what you don't
Speaker 1: want is like those numbers to be too close to
Speaker 1: one another, right, which is which I actually led to.
Speaker 1: One of the corks of the US interstate system is
Speaker 1: that there's actually no I fifty in the United States
Speaker 1: because there's a US Highway fifty and they would be
Speaker 1: in the exact same spot basically, and US Highway fifty
Speaker 1: I looked into It's called the loneliest road in America
Speaker 1: because it goes through some of the most desolate stretches
Speaker 1: in the entire country. Doesn't look like a fun trip
Speaker 1: to me. Where where does it go through? Um? The
Speaker 1: flyover states basically the drive through states kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like it goes I can't remember exactly where
Speaker 1: it goes through, but from from what I was reading,
Speaker 1: it's like there's huge long stretches between gas stations and
Speaker 1: towns and stuff like that, far more than the average
Speaker 1: even back road highway. Interesting. I'm wondering. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think if I've been on it. I'll have to
Speaker 1: look at the map I looked. I wondered if you,
Speaker 1: me and I have been on it between Scottsdale in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, because I was like, man, we were death
Speaker 1: really on desolate stretches. No, that was I think like
Speaker 1: ninety three or something like that, or sixty maybe sixty.
Speaker 1: It wasn't fifty though. Yeah. When I did my big
Speaker 1: Outwest trips, I was definitely on some roads where I thought,
Speaker 1: if I have car trouble, I'm you know, the buzzards
Speaker 1: will be circling doomed. Yeah. Yeah, so the highway systems going,
Speaker 1: not the interstate system yet. Yeah, that's a big, big
Speaker 1: thing to remember. We're talking about two different things here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: big deaf because these roads were still many, most of
Speaker 1: them two lane roads, and they still had some you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous curves, and they had stop lights, and they went
Speaker 1: through little towns in big towns, and they were just
Speaker 1: connected together at least that's right. So around this time, though,
Speaker 1: is this highway system is is um coming along and improving.
Speaker 1: They were just constantly adding to it and designating new
Speaker 1: roads that were you know, traditional horse and buggy paths
Speaker 1: to be improved into US highways. The autumn beal is
Speaker 1: becoming more and more important. Is going from you know,
Speaker 1: a luxury of the very rich to something that just
Speaker 1: about every American was starting to depend on, especially people
Speaker 1: who didn't live in the center of a city. So um,
Speaker 1: as the car gets more important, the highways start to
Speaker 1: get more and more important, and people started to say, look,
Speaker 1: I think we might be able to do better than
Speaker 1: what we have now. And that actually was the fire
Speaker 1: that ignited the interstate system as we understand it today.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great time to stop. As I
Speaker 1: was saying at Chuck, I was like, God, this is
Speaker 1: such a great segue into a message. Yeah, we'll take
Speaker 1: a little break and come back and talk about FDR
Speaker 1: right after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving
Speaker 1: in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
Speaker 1: from Josh Camp Chuck stuff you should know? All right?
Speaker 1: All right, So highways are being built, they're being connected.
Speaker 1: But uh, in N seven, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, here's
Speaker 1: a plan. Uh to the Bureau Public Roads, it's seven
Speaker 1: they're six super highways. And everyone went, what he's like,
Speaker 1: these are going to connect our nation. And they had
Speaker 1: all these reports done and that sort of formed the
Speaker 1: basis of what would become our highway system. But we
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to do this at the time. World War
Speaker 1: two came along and everything just sort of was put
Speaker 1: on hold, right um understandably so. But then afterward America
Speaker 1: was like, man, we've got a lot of money. And
Speaker 1: from what I've read, there was a concern that this
Speaker 1: post war boom that had been generated by World War two,
Speaker 1: because you know, one of the big knock on effects
Speaker 1: of World War two, it pulled us right out of
Speaker 1: the great depression and put us into a pretty great
Speaker 1: um boom period. I think they were scared to death
Speaker 1: that we were going to go back to a recession
Speaker 1: or lose this boom. And so some people say that
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons, one of the great unstated
Speaker 1: reasons for why the federal government was suddenly so um
Speaker 1: happy over the idea of spending billions and billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars to create this interstate system was to
Speaker 1: put significant numbers of people to work and just flood
Speaker 1: the economy throughout the entire country with government money to
Speaker 1: um just keep that post war boom going. And it
Speaker 1: worked like an absolute charm. It still works. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's still a stimulus package that's reliable is a lot
Speaker 1: of times now it's improving stuff obviously, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of presidents turned to, like, let's
Speaker 1: get people working on these roads that are falling apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look at these slackers, Somebody give them some asphalt. So
Speaker 1: Eisenhower is obviously most associated with the interstate system because
Speaker 1: it was when he was in office and he pushed
Speaker 1: for the Federal Aid Highway Act of nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: which really kind of made everything legit um. For many reasons,
Speaker 1: this was like a very necessary thing, not least of
Speaker 1: which was for the military. We talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: since World War One, we needed bigger roads, Like we
Speaker 1: didn't have railroad capacity to take all the armaments and
Speaker 1: all the things we needed and supplies, and then we
Speaker 1: didn't have the highways that could do it either. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen one, this guy named Thomas McDonald, he's ahead
Speaker 1: of the Bureau of Public Roads. He and his staff
Speaker 1: really drew up this this map, this proposed system of
Speaker 1: seventy eight thousand miles. Handed it over to General John Pershing,
Speaker 1: who presented it to Congress and said, we need these
Speaker 1: for you know, this is critical for the military. Became
Speaker 1: known as the Pershing Map, even though he just handed
Speaker 1: it over to Congress. It should be the Thomas McDonald map. Sure,
Speaker 1: but nobody knew who he was, and they would have
Speaker 1: been like, get out of here, McDonald, you know, buddy,
Speaker 1: probably General Pershing. They were like yes, sir, and like
Speaker 1: clicked their heels together and started building things. So, but
Speaker 1: that was back in the twenties. I think that the
Speaker 1: Pershing map was handed over right, but it was apparently
Speaker 1: such a good map. The pershing slash McDonald map. That's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna read, Christen it okay, Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was pretty I mean they drew it up in a
Speaker 1: way that made sense. But it wasn't like here's your
Speaker 1: exact blueprint. It's just like we've connected all the places
Speaker 1: we think we should connect. But it was basically the
Speaker 1: general blueprint that was used for the interstate system. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty pretty well done map. As Yes, it
Speaker 1: wasn't research, but they weren't you know, thirty years later
Speaker 1: they didn't go with this McDonald guy was way off there,
Speaker 1: basically like this this works really well, that's right. An
Speaker 1: Eisenhower himself had traveled the Lincoln Highway during World War
Speaker 1: One in a military convoy and he was like this
Speaker 1: kind of stinks. And all the military brass in Europe
Speaker 1: saw the Auto Bahn and they saw the highways in
Speaker 1: Italy and they were like, we need some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Plus also not just the military, but related to the military.
Speaker 1: This was done during the Cold War. You know, this
Speaker 1: is nineteen fifty six that the legislation was signed into
Speaker 1: law to create the interstate and this is you know,
Speaker 1: a pretty uneasy time. So there was a real concern
Speaker 1: that with the existing original US highway system, if atomic
Speaker 1: bombs started getting dropped out of the United States, we'd
Speaker 1: have a really hard time moving people from place to place,
Speaker 1: from bomb cities to unaffected cities. And um, this interstate
Speaker 1: was a big solution to that too. Yeah. And uh,
Speaker 1: not to oversell the military importance, but it was literally
Speaker 1: called at first the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, right,
Speaker 1: defense highways. Yeah. Interesting, At least it's not the offense highways,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, they're real aggressive, the pokey
Speaker 1: in the chest where they're talking to you. So. Um.
Speaker 1: There was another another reason. There's a whole list of reasons.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say, oh, it's all military. That's
Speaker 1: that was large part of it, but that certainly was
Speaker 1: not the only reason that the interstates were built in
Speaker 1: the United States. Another one was that people were starting
Speaker 1: to move into the cities more and more, and they
Speaker 1: had been for decades already. People were moving, leaving their
Speaker 1: farms for factories. But this is putting an enormous strain
Speaker 1: on the cities themselves, as huge influx of people that
Speaker 1: the infrastructure couldn't really support. So they said, well, wait,
Speaker 1: a minute. If we build these interstates, we'll be able
Speaker 1: to more easily connect these rural areas with the cities.
Speaker 1: And then I've got this genius idea that people can
Speaker 1: continue to live in the rural areas but go to
Speaker 1: and from work each day in the city. What do
Speaker 1: you think of out that? And everyone said, that's that's
Speaker 1: probably the best most flawless idea anyone's ever had in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. Right, and then que upcoming
Speaker 1: podcast on the suburbs, right exactly and excerbs nice. I
Speaker 1: think we just did like a choose your own adventure
Speaker 1: wedge in their trucks is pretty sweet. Another couple of reasons, uh,
Speaker 1: leisure travel. You know, people hitting getting in their car
Speaker 1: with the family and going on a vacation, driving across
Speaker 1: country to see these roadside attractions and stay in hotels
Speaker 1: and swimming swimming pools. It was all very new stuff
Speaker 1: in America. Safety interstates, no matter which way you slice it,
Speaker 1: are a lot safer, even though you're going faster, a
Speaker 1: lot safer than these highways that they had out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is really funny to think of if like I
Speaker 1: think of highways like crash on a highway it's just
Speaker 1: like you know, limbs everywhere and just blood all over
Speaker 1: the place. But the thing is like, yes, you you
Speaker 1: can get into big serious trouble going very fast on
Speaker 1: on the highway or on an interstate. But on a
Speaker 1: highway you don't have things like this designated um set
Speaker 1: distance between the incoming and on oncoming traffic. UM. You
Speaker 1: don't have like gentle slopes to the shoulders so that
Speaker 1: if you do, you know, fall off the side of
Speaker 1: the road, you're not necessarily go yeah, you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to bear overall. You might just like keep driving straight.
Speaker 1: There's all these designs that are created to make highways safer,
Speaker 1: interstates safer than highways, And part of it is like
Speaker 1: you can't get in an head on collision with another car.
Speaker 1: It's basically impossible on a United States interstates. Well, and yeah,
Speaker 1: unless somebody gets on going the wrong way, which happens,
Speaker 1: it does happen very infrequently, but under normal conditions, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna veer out of your lane. You'll veer into
Speaker 1: the median and go, what the heck happened? I'm driving
Speaker 1: on grass right exactly the other the other there's two
Speaker 1: other things that make interstates distinct from highways that improve
Speaker 1: their safety safety tremendously. One is that there's there controlled
Speaker 1: h entrance and exits right. So that means that when
Speaker 1: you get onto a highway or an interstate, man, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do that all episode apparently you're you're traveling in
Speaker 1: the same direction as traffic and ideally at speed. So
Speaker 1: I remember very distinctly in UH driver's ed the first
Speaker 1: time I emerged onto the highway and how nerve wracking
Speaker 1: that is, and the dude telling me to punch it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, but the speed limit and he was
Speaker 1: he was correct, He was correct, and saying like, no, man,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, like you gotta go as fast as
Speaker 1: they're going or it's dangerous. That's right, But that's a
Speaker 1: that's a huge difference. Then, say like a highway where
Speaker 1: somebody turns right into traffic and all the people behind
Speaker 1: them have to slow while they speed up to the
Speaker 1: flow of traffic. So that's a huge thing. And then
Speaker 1: also the reason why people don't turn right onto the
Speaker 1: highway is because any criss cross with the interstate, I
Speaker 1: should say, did it again, any any criss cross with it,
Speaker 1: um is goes over like it's a bridge. You have
Speaker 1: an overpass. That's how you get across the highway. There's
Speaker 1: no stop lights, there's no you know, somebody just driving,
Speaker 1: you know, perpendicular with the flow of traffic. You go
Speaker 1: over that with an interstate I love it. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of this, he said, this is a very important distinction.
Speaker 1: You should have said, which I will fail to make
Speaker 1: over and over, which I will blur in your mind forever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the other one of the other big things,
Speaker 1: you know, and Ed said, they don't have stop lights. Um,
Speaker 1: there are traffic lights now and a lot of cities
Speaker 1: to more safely get you onto the highway, but they
Speaker 1: still give you enough ramp time to get up to speed.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's for to ease congestion. Yeah, just so
Speaker 1: there's not a hundred cars trying to pile on it.
Speaker 1: One it's it's one car every whatever, three or four seconds.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about that in our traffic episode.
Speaker 1: Not pretty sure like that really really helps ease congestion. Traffic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that yeah, you coin that I did, didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: I break bubble one of the bubbles. I think it
Speaker 1: was the break bubble. I think so I certainly talked
Speaker 1: about a lot. I remember that. Uh. And then one
Speaker 1: of the other big reasons kind of to kind of
Speaker 1: jump back here, why we needed these highways. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: here we go again, interstates with simple economics. If you
Speaker 1: could get these, uh, urban centers connected to rural towns
Speaker 1: and these efficient roads where you could ship goods faster
Speaker 1: and further than you ever have, and extend the range
Speaker 1: of the workforce more than you ever have, It's just
Speaker 1: cannot be overstated what that did for the American economy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean connecting those rural areas and eventually suburban areas.
Speaker 1: It's like you have a way bigger workforce pool if
Speaker 1: you're a company located downtown then you did with these highways,
Speaker 1: because you know, the commute would have just been unsustainable, unbearable.
Speaker 1: I mean it's already bad enough on the interstates, but
Speaker 1: with just you know, original US highways, it just wouldn't
Speaker 1: you couldn't do it. Here's to me, one of the
Speaker 1: more interesting parts of this is that originally the US
Speaker 1: interstate system and Eisenhower wanted them to all be toll
Speaker 1: roads because he's like, what's better than having something that
Speaker 1: people just it pays for itself. But they did all
Speaker 1: these studies and it turns out, and I think this
Speaker 1: is still pretty much true, toll roads aren't a super
Speaker 1: great idea. And there have to be very specific conditions
Speaker 1: where in a toll road will actually pay for itself
Speaker 1: or even you know, bring in a profit right like
Speaker 1: you have. It has to be in a very um
Speaker 1: heavily trafficked area, and then there has to be basically
Speaker 1: no other alternative but that road to get from point
Speaker 1: to point be Otherwise people are just gonna say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna save my nickel or whatever it was back then.
Speaker 1: That's why remember four hundred Georgia four hundred. It was
Speaker 1: really successful as a toll road because it was so
Speaker 1: successful that it paid for the road. It paid for
Speaker 1: itself within twenty years, and they ripped the toll booths
Speaker 1: out because Republicans were in charge of the time. They
Speaker 1: said no more tolls. Do you remember, Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: they were up longer than they said they were going
Speaker 1: to be up, though, and people started complaining like, hey,
Speaker 1: I thought the plan was these are going down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Sonny Perdue, I think, was the guy who was like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're getting rid of them, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was deal, I can't remember. But the the reason four
Speaker 1: hundred was so successful as a toll roads because there
Speaker 1: really weren't very many other ways to to get you know,
Speaker 1: from uh, the Buckhead area of Atlanta up to the
Speaker 1: northern north Eastern suburbs except for four hundred. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was I mean, I don't I don't have to pay
Speaker 1: two dollars to go see my brother now, and I
Speaker 1: had to do that for many years, except for the
Speaker 1: two dollars he charges me when I show up at
Speaker 1: his front door to play is Adams Family Pimball, He's like,
Speaker 1: give me two dollars. It has to be a two
Speaker 1: dollar bill to will not accept anything else. That's so
Speaker 1: scott so um. The toll roads don't pay for themselves.
Speaker 1: One reason why I chuck. They don't typically pay for
Speaker 1: themselves because especially if you're talking about interstates, there's really
Speaker 1: long stretches of interstate that are not heavily traffics and
Speaker 1: you would have to pay for that with the toll Well,
Speaker 1: if somebody's coming through, you know, once a day and
Speaker 1: paying a dollar, that's not going to pay for the upkeep.
Speaker 1: So much so that they actually there was a study
Speaker 1: that was done I think ahead of time. Uh that
Speaker 1: when they were planning the interstates, and they found that
Speaker 1: a lot of these, even like fairly successful toll roads
Speaker 1: or toll interstates, probably would just barely pay for the
Speaker 1: salaries of the tollbooth workers. So like that's a wash
Speaker 1: of all washes. So they said, okay, no toll roads.
Speaker 1: How about instead we'll start taxing gasoline. Yeah, not just gasoline,
Speaker 1: but let's let's propose a bill that taxes the rubber
Speaker 1: industry because of tires um the trucking industry, and they
Speaker 1: all said, no, I don't want to be taxed forget this.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. So they said, all right, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna do this. Yeah, they managed to beat the
Speaker 1: bill to create the interstate system. Yeah, they beat it down. Uh,
Speaker 1: Congress goes into recession. And then the trucking industry went, uh,
Speaker 1: what do we just do because this actually would have
Speaker 1: been a really great thing for trucking. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: maybe we do want that after all. And they came
Speaker 1: back with a different bill that was pretty much the same,
Speaker 1: and that one passed. Yeah, and you can understand why
Speaker 1: they were They were a little shortsighted. They said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to pay extra for tires and for gasoline.
Speaker 1: We used that stuff, but then somebody crunches the numbers
Speaker 1: and said, well everybody showed up. But the idea that
Speaker 1: that it would be done through tax dollars rather than
Speaker 1: toll roads. That was a big um result of a
Speaker 1: PR push that was taken up by UM, the Triple A,
Speaker 1: General Motors, other car companies. They formed something called the
Speaker 1: National Highway Users Conference and UM. From this they basically
Speaker 1: managed to create this this change of mentality in Americans
Speaker 1: minds from oh yeah, roads are created and supported by
Speaker 1: rich people and auto enthusiasts too. It is a national
Speaker 1: duty to build and maintain roads, and it is the
Speaker 1: federal government's responsibility to create inner states. And that was
Speaker 1: the result of a PR push. And part of that
Speaker 1: PR push is how we got freeways. That was meant
Speaker 1: to really kind of point out how bad an idea
Speaker 1: toll roads were. The ideas you don't want toll roads,
Speaker 1: you want free roads, which came to be called freeways,
Speaker 1: and freeways are basically supported by gas tax. That's great,
Speaker 1: I thought so too. That's a good little dinner party
Speaker 1: if you want to be super obnoxious. Yeah, oh, you
Speaker 1: drove over on the freeway. You know where they can that.
Speaker 1: So the inshot of all this, or the upshot I
Speaker 1: guess there is no inshot, is that these taxes would
Speaker 1: be placed into the Highway Trust Fund, and it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good deal for for states. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: Social Security. The government is going to tax uh letty
Speaker 1: these taxes to pay for more highways, but provide of
Speaker 1: that funding to states to do it themselves. So the states,
Speaker 1: they're getting lots of jobs created, these big, huge public
Speaker 1: works projects, they only have to pay ten percent of
Speaker 1: that and they get a highway on top of that. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like mayors and governors loved this idea because it made
Speaker 1: them look like they were just so like all this
Speaker 1: job creation and economic growth was happening under them, and
Speaker 1: it just got dropped in their laps by by Ike
Speaker 1: and the Feds and they're only on the hook for
Speaker 1: ten percent of it. And the idea was every American
Speaker 1: city with at least fifty people, uh, we're going to
Speaker 1: connect to them all within thirteen years, which did not happen. No,
Speaker 1: it didn't. As a matter of fact, officially, the first
Speaker 1: UM original plan was completed in Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: little more than thirteen years from nineteen fifty six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that points out it's i mean, it's technically finished,
Speaker 1: but it's never finished. It's always being worked on and
Speaker 1: tweaked and changed here and there. Ye, so Chuck. Before
Speaker 1: they got started, they had to actually do some research first.
Speaker 1: This is pretty cool. They didn't just say, sure, we
Speaker 1: we've been building highways, we know how to build interstates. Um,
Speaker 1: They really, you know, did a lot of examination on
Speaker 1: how to best build these because the interstate is much
Speaker 1: different from the highway. Like the highway just kind of
Speaker 1: went around, Um, the terrain and the landscape. It was
Speaker 1: bent to the will of the landscape, subservient to it.
Speaker 1: Interstates are not like that. They are American muscle carving
Speaker 1: through mother Earth. Were over that. Interstate wants to go
Speaker 1: fast as you please. And they use something called cut
Speaker 1: and fill, which is exactly what it sounds like. They
Speaker 1: just cut out the track for the interstate and then
Speaker 1: they filled it with the stuff that makes up the
Speaker 1: interstate roads. But to figure out what to use for
Speaker 1: the interstate roads, they actually did a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: research first. Yeah, they this is really cool. They built
Speaker 1: these test tracks near Chicago, Illinois, and assigned a U. S.
Speaker 1: Army company to live there for two years and load
Speaker 1: up trucks and drive them around nineteen hours every day
Speaker 1: for two years. Sounds so awful to see, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just willy nilly build a road that's supposed
Speaker 1: to last forever, you know, with with upkeep obviously, but
Speaker 1: you got to really really test the stuff out over
Speaker 1: time and wait and duration to to make sure that
Speaker 1: it holds up. So they had to do all this
Speaker 1: to determine how thick it needed to be, in what
Speaker 1: the layers need to be, and what the final player
Speaker 1: is going to be. And uh, not only that, they
Speaker 1: had to decide like hey, what about signage, It's got
Speaker 1: to be all the same. Uh. They ended up settling
Speaker 1: on green with reverse messaging, so green background white lettering,
Speaker 1: which apparently is they did test. It's more visible if
Speaker 1: you have a reverse message then the other way around,
Speaker 1: especially at night, rather than like say, black letters on
Speaker 1: a white field. Yeah, exactly. Which speed limit signs are
Speaker 1: like that, but you know they they have to distinguish
Speaker 1: like the exit signs and the highway signs because the
Speaker 1: actual highway badge interstate badge is blue and red, red,
Speaker 1: white and blue. I guess if you count the white.
Speaker 1: I just got that. Yeah, there's white on their right
Speaker 1: and the outlined in white. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they tested colors. They decided green generally means go,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna stick with green. Uh, but red, white,
Speaker 1: and blue for the shields for interstates, but green shields
Speaker 1: for business loops and spur Oh yeah when you see
Speaker 1: this weird thing, Yeah, it does look a little weird.
Speaker 1: But the the font that they used is actually on
Speaker 1: the green signs in particulars called highway Gothic, which is great,
Speaker 1: which I feel like we've talked about that before. I'll
Speaker 1: bet it was in the Traffic episode now that I
Speaker 1: think about it. Yeah. Yeah, So they get all this
Speaker 1: stuff done, they figured it out. The poor army company
Speaker 1: that had to live on these tracks in Chicago for
Speaker 1: two years are all discharged. Um, and the building begins.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't really go according to plan. Like we
Speaker 1: said that it was supposed to take thirteen years to
Speaker 1: complete the first forty thousand miles of interstate, and they completed,
Speaker 1: but they ran into issues pretty much from the get
Speaker 1: go quick question. When you say they were discharged, you
Speaker 1: mean they just stopped that project. I'm I'm assuming here
Speaker 1: that they were discharged because they were just they were
Speaker 1: forced to do that for two years that they said,
Speaker 1: you're fine. You don't have to do anything else because
Speaker 1: you're out of the army, right if you want to be.
Speaker 1: And here's some extra money. Uh. This Yellow Book comes
Speaker 1: into play here, and this is when the what the
Speaker 1: federal officials um finally officially submitted as the proposed map. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this one, much like the Perching map, wasn't super detailed,
Speaker 1: just had rough lines and spurs and belt ways. And
Speaker 1: they said, all right, states, since you're getting a really
Speaker 1: sweet deal here, you need to figure out how best
Speaker 1: to do this within your state. Right. So, um, before
Speaker 1: we go on actually talk about what happened when they
Speaker 1: started building it, you want to take a last break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay. Yeah. Well, now we're on the road,
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
Speaker 1: two from Josh Damp Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: all right, Okay, Chuck. So, when you're building an interstate
Speaker 1: and you're building it through pasture land or fields, or
Speaker 1: you know, even desert whatever, UM, sparsely inhabited regions, you
Speaker 1: don't run into too much problem. You can do it
Speaker 1: fairly cheaply, you can do it pretty quickly. Um. There's
Speaker 1: just not a lot of stuff you have to get
Speaker 1: done aside from building the road. But when you start
Speaker 1: to approach cities, everything changes. It gets way more expensive,
Speaker 1: it takes way longer, and the the effects that it
Speaker 1: has on that area, on the city can be really
Speaker 1: really bad. And when they started to approach these cities
Speaker 1: and started creating the interstate system around the cities, UM,
Speaker 1: some some towns, especially the well to do wealthier people
Speaker 1: in the towns, said whoa, whoa, wait, this map shows
Speaker 1: this highway going through my neighborhood and that's not happening.
Speaker 1: That's not going to happen. And there were what we're
Speaker 1: called highway revolts where local local groups, sometimes in in
Speaker 1: um collaboration with UH, like local politicians who felt the
Speaker 1: same way or probably lived in the same areas, kind
Speaker 1: of rose up against the Feds or even the state
Speaker 1: government and said this is we need to re plan
Speaker 1: where this highway is going. And some were successful. There's
Speaker 1: one in northwest DC that never got built, and there
Speaker 1: was one probably the most famous of all was the
Speaker 1: one in Manhattan that was led by Jane Jacobs, who
Speaker 1: wrote the Life and Death of Great American Cities, who
Speaker 1: took on Robert Moses, the guy who revamped Central Park
Speaker 1: into what it is now today. And one because they
Speaker 1: were going to build the Interstate right through Soho, the
Speaker 1: Lower east Side, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and Little Italy. They
Speaker 1: were just gonna tear it up and go right through there,
Speaker 1: and Jane Jacobs managed to stave it off. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was you know when the when the rich people said
Speaker 1: not in my neighborhood. What do you what do you
Speaker 1: think happened? They went to the people that couldn't fight
Speaker 1: back as much. They ran them through poor neighborhoods, use
Speaker 1: eminent domain to kick people out. Uh. And there was
Speaker 1: some grassroots, grassroots resistance and like you said, sometimes it worked,
Speaker 1: but most times it did not. Yeah, and so this
Speaker 1: is this is in cities where there was resistance. There
Speaker 1: were plenty of cities who are like, this is going
Speaker 1: to be breathe new life into our city. So that's fine,
Speaker 1: tear down whatever you want. Let's get this super highway
Speaker 1: of the future going through you know, uh, Topeka, Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pretty sure forty goes through Topeka or Manhattan, Kansas. Okay, sure, Manhattan,
Speaker 1: Kansas to get it in New York. It's ironic that
Speaker 1: we said that because UM, the first UM, the first
Speaker 1: project that was started on the interstate system began in
Speaker 1: Kansas and Missouri. Is that right? Yeah? I seventy Kansas
Speaker 1: and Missouri as usual leading the country forward in progressive
Speaker 1: new ways. That's right. And then in the reason why
Speaker 1: they consider the interstate system having been completed is because
Speaker 1: that section I think it's ice seventy, not forty UM
Speaker 1: was completed in Kansas, connected onto itself and they said
Speaker 1: we're done. Yeah, it's seventy. So I think we should
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about just some of the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of UM, what an interstate is, and what
Speaker 1: they needed to be. When they were first designing these
Speaker 1: we talked about getting away from you know, they need
Speaker 1: to go fast and they need to be safe. Those
Speaker 1: are like the two big requirements. So all these big
Speaker 1: curvy roads and absence of sight lines and blind bends
Speaker 1: and things that you had in the highway system was
Speaker 1: no good super steep grades so they wanted to streamline
Speaker 1: all that make it more gentle, good sight lines, nice
Speaker 1: and straight. You gotta have at least two traffic lanes
Speaker 1: in each direction for the divided interstate. You know, now
Speaker 1: we have what are we max out Atlanta, like six
Speaker 1: or eight lanes across. It's gonna be eleven. The plan
Speaker 1: is for eleven on each side eventually, so twenty two
Speaker 1: lanes of traffic. It's just gonna be a monstrosity. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: The lanes and shoulders have minimum ws twelve feet for lanes,
Speaker 1: ten feet for shoulders, and four feet for the that
Speaker 1: very scary inside shoulder which you never want to be
Speaker 1: pulled over on. UH. And then as far as speed
Speaker 1: limit goes, it's sort of varied over the years. I remember,
Speaker 1: UH after nineteen seventy four. I mean it was only
Speaker 1: three in nineteen seventy four, but that is when the
Speaker 1: fifty five mile per hour speed limit was mandated. UH
Speaker 1: in most states. UH, if you wanted to receive federal
Speaker 1: funding for highway projects, get in line with that, because
Speaker 1: you went on we had the gas crisis, oil crisis,
Speaker 1: So if you wanted your dough, drop it to fifty five.
Speaker 1: And it was fifty five for a while, Jammy Hagar
Speaker 1: wrote a song about it. Oh yeah, he couldn't drive it. No,
Speaker 1: despite you know, the um the oil crisis, he just
Speaker 1: could not drive it. But I remember when they started
Speaker 1: relaxing that and when sixty and seventy started popping up,
Speaker 1: it was just like it was a really big deal. Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever told you this or not,
Speaker 1: but Sammy Hagar's son is a fan of stuff. You
Speaker 1: should he is. He wrote in um Maybe to the
Speaker 1: End of the World to one of them and basically said, hey,
Speaker 1: I heard you guys shout out my dad or make
Speaker 1: a joke about, you know, Sammy Hagar or whatever. I
Speaker 1: just want you to know I'm a big fan. And
Speaker 1: he sent a picture of him and his dad hanging
Speaker 1: out on stage down in um Kabbo Sam Lucas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so shout out to Sammy Hagar's boy, and I bet
Speaker 1: you we made and I can't drive fifty five joke.
Speaker 1: We certainly did well. Emily is very famous for liking
Speaker 1: Van Hagar more than David Lee Roth van Halen. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you have to choose, They're so different.
Speaker 1: I liked him both. I went and saw Van Hagar
Speaker 1: live on the o U eight one two tour in
Speaker 1: high school and it was great. And I love that
Speaker 1: fifty one fifty album too. Man. I could air drum,
Speaker 1: air guitar and air ace that entire album. Could you
Speaker 1: air keyboards? Um? Not very well, I have fat fingers.
Speaker 1: Well that's sort of the most boring air instrument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no it's not, but it's easy. It's the easy it's
Speaker 1: the best one to start out on. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: shout out to the Red Rocker and his son. Then,
Speaker 1: So Red Rocker, I haven't heard that one. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: um Montrose that was his big band, is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Before he went solo, he was in Montrose. Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I only knew him. I only picked
Speaker 1: him up around that. I can't drive fifty. I hope
Speaker 1: his son is listening, because he's probably quite delighted with Uh.
Speaker 1: He's like, my name, isn't Sammy Hagar's son? By the way, guys,
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar's son Hagar. We should look up his name
Speaker 1: because that would be very nice. Okay, are you doing it? Yes?
Speaker 1: All right, I'll just continue on. Are we are we
Speaker 1: editing this little combo? Are yeah, we should have it
Speaker 1: in there, and I'll talk about Montana because Montana. As
Speaker 1: everyone knows, you don't mess with Montana. They like to
Speaker 1: make up their own rules. They were they were very
Speaker 1: famou what's his name? Oh man, he's got two sons,
Speaker 1: Aaron and Andrew. It's one of the two. Maybe both
Speaker 1: of them are fans. I bet you they are. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Montana is very famous for saying like, we just
Speaker 1: are going to drive however fast we want to drive.
Speaker 1: We may not even have a speed limit. For a while,
Speaker 1: became known as the basic law, and it was the
Speaker 1: speed limit in the daytime was whatever is reasonable and
Speaker 1: proper as determined by us. You hear me. No one's
Speaker 1: gonna tell us like Sammy Hagar to drive fifty five.
Speaker 1: Don't tread on me. I think that's er mind, okay,
Speaker 1: is it? No? That's the tea party, Aaron Hagar. I
Speaker 1: just found it, Evan, So that forward that to me,
Speaker 1: will you? Yeah? Um? So Montana eventually, I think right
Speaker 1: now they do have a daytime speed limit finally, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what it's probably like ninety five uh yeah,
Speaker 1: probably is pretty high up there, actually. But the idea
Speaker 1: of just not having a posted a numerical speed limit
Speaker 1: at they which apparently they did for a little while.
Speaker 1: That's just astounding. Yeah, but the idea of driving sixty
Speaker 1: through rural Montana is ridiculous. Well, yeah, you need to
Speaker 1: be going eight right exactly. I'm guessing that the cops
Speaker 1: probably look the other way. Yeah, cops in Montana, they
Speaker 1: get smaller fish to fry. So, I mean, because you
Speaker 1: can go so fast, that's the danger of the highways.
Speaker 1: But again, because it's closed access or controlled access where
Speaker 1: there are very few places you can get on and off,
Speaker 1: and those places are designated and designed for you to
Speaker 1: get on and off of the highway, that the rest
Speaker 1: of the highways just for go go going. Um, it
Speaker 1: is typically safer. I don't think we said compared to
Speaker 1: highways an interstate per million car miles driven, is it
Speaker 1: a million million? I'm sorry, you're right, I believe per
Speaker 1: hundred million. I'm I'm tapped ending here because I cannot
Speaker 1: find it. Um, per hundred million car miles driven. I
Speaker 1: know that the the interstate death talt rate is only
Speaker 1: point eight two the highways. That's overgoing with stats wise,
Speaker 1: I got it right here, friend, Um one point four
Speaker 1: six deaths for all other US roads, that's per hundred
Speaker 1: million vehicle miles driven. On interstates, it's point eight deaths
Speaker 1: per hundred million vehicle miles driven. That's a substantial, almost
Speaker 1: almost half the rate of fatality as every other US road.
Speaker 1: And it's because of the way it's designed. Even though
Speaker 1: you can go really really fast, the thing is designed
Speaker 1: like bumper bowl to where you can't really get a
Speaker 1: gutter ball very easily. So here's the thing we talked about.
Speaker 1: All these uh, like you gotta have a media in
Speaker 1: this big and you know, all these regulations that define
Speaker 1: what an interstate is. Uh, it's not the case everywhere
Speaker 1: you go. There are plenty of examples um of turnpikes
Speaker 1: and three ways that we're sort of grandfathered in here
Speaker 1: and there. Um toll roads that were grandfathered in states
Speaker 1: that don't have the medians that they need, or do
Speaker 1: have some steep grades and curves just because of the
Speaker 1: terrain and stuff, or you know, speed limit differences, and
Speaker 1: they relax some of that here and there. So that
Speaker 1: was that stuff was more of a general requirement, not
Speaker 1: like the hard and fast rule and the fist will
Speaker 1: come down and you will not be an interstate unless
Speaker 1: you have a medium that kind of thing. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the stuff that got grandfathered and it's still around. But
Speaker 1: when they rebuild these roads or update them or improve them,
Speaker 1: which is constantly going on, you know they're going to
Speaker 1: get rid of that light and put in an overpass instead.
Speaker 1: That's right. So when you have like a public works
Speaker 1: project this big and supposedly this is the biggest in
Speaker 1: the history of human kind is does that? Does that
Speaker 1: sound right? I mean that's some have said that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go with that because we live in the USA. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, when you have a project that big, it's
Speaker 1: going to have some weird quirks and foibles and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, all the Dave Barry adjectives. Um. And
Speaker 1: one of the things is that because of the way
Speaker 1: that some some roads come up against one another, you
Speaker 1: have something called concurrency where sometimes two different interstates will
Speaker 1: share the same roadbed for a stretch, and so you
Speaker 1: can literally be driving on two different interstates by game. Right,
Speaker 1: And then one particular stretch of Virginia ten miles stretch
Speaker 1: around where Virginia and Tennessee come together, there's a concurrent
Speaker 1: stretch that's technically a wrong way concurrent stretch. Did you
Speaker 1: know about this one? Yeah, So there's a stretch in
Speaker 1: Virginia Interstate eighty one in Interstate seventy seven, and they're concurrent.
Speaker 1: So when you're driving on this ten mile stretch, you're
Speaker 1: on both of these these interstates. But the weird thing
Speaker 1: is IS eighty one and seventy seven because they're odd
Speaker 1: numbered highways or interstates, they run north to south, but
Speaker 1: this ten mile stretch runs east to west. Pretty weird, right,
Speaker 1: it gets even weirder, Chuck for this wrong way concurrent
Speaker 1: stretch of highway, this ten mile stretch, you're actually going
Speaker 1: on I eighty one north but I seventy seven south
Speaker 1: when the actual direction of travel you're on is going
Speaker 1: east to west. Yeah. I mean when you think about
Speaker 1: perimeters to uh, there are times in Atlanta around the
Speaker 1: five where you're you know, is it marked north or
Speaker 1: is it marked west or is it mark south or
Speaker 1: west or north and east. It's very confusing and on
Speaker 1: where you are in that circle. Right, And we should
Speaker 1: say that with with the interstate numbering system, we got
Speaker 1: to talk about that it's not meant to be a
Speaker 1: navigational guide. It's meant to keep from duplicating, um the
Speaker 1: same interstate route in different parts of the country, and
Speaker 1: for the same interstate or for the same numbered interstates
Speaker 1: to um come up against one another. They're meant to
Speaker 1: keep everything quite separate. Yeah. From the beginning, they're like,
Speaker 1: get a map, people like, don't rely on these signs
Speaker 1: to get you places. So, so, if you were looking
Speaker 1: at a map of the United States going from the
Speaker 1: west to the east, UM, odd number highways that run
Speaker 1: run from north to south. The low numbers start in
Speaker 1: the west, So I five is the first one, and
Speaker 1: that's over in California. That's right, Great Great Highway goes
Speaker 1: up to which is on the eastern seaboard, Great Great Expressway,
Speaker 1: and then in between you have all the other fives,
Speaker 1: the odd number ones. They run from north to south.
Speaker 1: Now east to west you have even numbered ones, and
Speaker 1: they start at the lowest in the south, well, starting
Speaker 1: with ten. I'm a big faded by twenty twenties. I've
Speaker 1: driven that thing from here to California quite a few times, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I can see why you'd be a fan of
Speaker 1: my twenty. Then it's a nice that's a nice drive
Speaker 1: right there. They get you there, that's their motto. But
Speaker 1: if you go up, up, up, you you ten sixty.
Speaker 1: There is no fifty. And apparently ED says the Department
Speaker 1: of Transportations used to get letters from people saying like
Speaker 1: you guys, screwed up. There's no interstate fifty, oh people,
Speaker 1: which is hilarious. Too much time on their hands. Here's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. Alaska and Puerto Rico they don't have
Speaker 1: to meet these federal interstate standards, and technically they're not
Speaker 1: federal interstates, their interstates in name only. And then in
Speaker 1: Hawaii you have three inner states, all on Oahu, and
Speaker 1: they are designated with an H instead of an eye
Speaker 1: instead of interstate. It's whatever. H. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I've never been there. What are what are the numbers?
Speaker 1: I think there's an H five maybe, but the thing
Speaker 1: about it even weirder, and the fact that it's an
Speaker 1: H instead of an eye, there's no dash. It looks
Speaker 1: really like like Western European, like the like the M
Speaker 1: five or whatever, like I see palm trees, but I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm in Budapest right exactly. So what the
Speaker 1: we talked about, Like at the very beginning, I said
Speaker 1: that like, one of the things that fascinates me are
Speaker 1: the massive sweeping effects that interstates have had on the
Speaker 1: United States. And a lot of people have studied the effects,
Speaker 1: and there have been some good and some bad. And
Speaker 1: I came across the forum I can't remember on what
Speaker 1: um what site, but the question was is a net
Speaker 1: gain or a net loss for America with the interstate systems?
Speaker 1: And it seemed pretty evenly divided. You can make a
Speaker 1: case both ways that you know, in these ways it helped.
Speaker 1: In these ways it was really terrible. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of a subjective judgment whether when you add all those up,
Speaker 1: it was actually a gain for America or you know,
Speaker 1: a loss. Well, we already talked about safety definitely, say,
Speaker 1: for UH, if you listen to our Root sixty six episode,
Speaker 1: you'll hear lots of stories about quote unquote dead towns. UM.
Speaker 1: These these small towns and junctions where people traveled on
Speaker 1: these pretty popular highways UH, and restaurants and local mom
Speaker 1: and pops they went away, UH in large part because
Speaker 1: of these expressways built right beside them sometimes and that
Speaker 1: that real estate where you get off on these exits
Speaker 1: is super expensive. So it's not like you're you're gonna
Speaker 1: see very few, you know, mom paw restaurants at these exits.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see the major chains, the major gas stations,
Speaker 1: and major major restaurants and shopping centers. All right, they're
Speaker 1: kind of congregated on the highways, right, So they produced
Speaker 1: homogenus across America, the inter state there I go. But
Speaker 1: that so that created this sense of homogeneity where it
Speaker 1: was like the same national brands, the only ones who
Speaker 1: are big enough to buy up this real estate were
Speaker 1: the ones that you find at any given exit, you know,
Speaker 1: the same handful of them across the United States. So
Speaker 1: it lost its local flavor for sure. That's a big effect.
Speaker 1: That's a huge loss for America. Yeah, rail use definitely declined. UM,
Speaker 1: trucking definitely improved or benefited at least. Uh what else?
Speaker 1: Ed says? Crime, which is something I never really thought about,
Speaker 1: but there have definitely been a lot of interstate killers
Speaker 1: who could uh pick someone up at a truck stop
Speaker 1: and kill them and get on that highway and get
Speaker 1: out of there quick like. That was the I five strangler,
Speaker 1: the I seventy killer, UM, a series of murderers along
Speaker 1: I forty. I think that was like where they were
Speaker 1: like people are driving around shooting other people at high
Speaker 1: speeds on the highway. Do you remember that, like the
Speaker 1: eight or nineties. Yeah, you can't have that without the interstate. No,
Speaker 1: So you know that's an effect. But another way that
Speaker 1: it affected crime to UM is found really pronounced lee
Speaker 1: in l A. Like l A became the bank robbery
Speaker 1: capital of the world from what I understand, at least
Speaker 1: the United States. And the reason why is because it's
Speaker 1: massive system of interstates throughout the entire city. UM allowed
Speaker 1: for really easy escape routes for bank robbers. I can
Speaker 1: see that. There's a really great article by I think
Speaker 1: his name's Jeff man Off Um. Anyway, he had the
Speaker 1: he has like the the building blog and it's UM
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I'll see if I can find I'll
Speaker 1: tweet it out. It's a really great article. I should
Speaker 1: have looked it up. Yeah. So in the end, like
Speaker 1: you said, I guess it's sort of split on how
Speaker 1: people view this. It's hard to measure some of these
Speaker 1: effects and put like a number on things like the
Speaker 1: death of the mom and pop store. Some of those
Speaker 1: are a little more esoteric and emotional, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting to think about. Yep, yeah, I like them too,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it stinks that they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're super congested. Sometimes the cities better than suburbia, but
Speaker 1: you know, the Interstates funneled people out into suburbia urban sprawl. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's fascinating to think, like it's got the
Speaker 1: good and the bad. Just the sweeping effects are just
Speaker 1: so ingrained that you're just they're tough to see sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I got one more thing, actually, the
Speaker 1: whole notion of the especially in California, of putting the
Speaker 1: word the in front of the highways on the two ten,
Speaker 1: the one oh one, whereas here on the East Coast
Speaker 1: we say, uh, it is not just an l a thing.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's a lot of the Western States, especially on
Speaker 1: the West coast. Because my my friend and fellow podcaster
Speaker 1: Adam Pranica, was in Atlanta recently and he said, do
Speaker 1: I take of the twenty? I just thought it sounded
Speaker 1: so funny, did you say, did you hit your head?
Speaker 1: And he's a Seattle guy, so they definitely say it there,
Speaker 1: and I was just kind of curious where that came from.
Speaker 1: And that's just a holdover, like you mentioned California had
Speaker 1: some of the first freeway, uh not interstates, but just
Speaker 1: larger highways, and they had they were named. It was
Speaker 1: before they were numbered. So this was in like the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. They had the Santa Monica Freeway, the Kawanga
Speaker 1: Pass Freeway. It was designated by where it went, and
Speaker 1: they were you know, it would make sense to put
Speaker 1: a D in front of those, and that just sort
Speaker 1: of held over. Once they started numbering him. They couldn't
Speaker 1: shake it. But even still we still didn't use the
Speaker 1: back then because if you think about it, there was
Speaker 1: a famous highway from Indiana down to Miami called Dixie Highway,
Speaker 1: and here you call it Dixie Highway or Old Dixie Highway,
Speaker 1: not the Old Dixie Highway or the Dixie Highway. We
Speaker 1: just don't like the here maybe so coast. It was
Speaker 1: too hot and everybody had too much hookworms to say
Speaker 1: the I guess it was unnecessary. So if this kind
Speaker 1: of thing floated your boat, go check out UM. I
Speaker 1: read some many good articles, but one was by Linda
Speaker 1: Poon on City Lab Look that up. Another was by
Speaker 1: a guy named Joseph Stromberg Vox. And then that Jeff
Speaker 1: Man in a Um, he doesn't have the building blog.
Speaker 1: He has. Cabinet is the name of his site. In
Speaker 1: that article about l A being the bank robbery capital
Speaker 1: is called forensic Topology and our own Grabster of course,
Speaker 1: hats off to Grabster. And since we said Grabster, that
Speaker 1: means everybody's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this follow up on the punk episode. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just finished listening to your punk podcast. Being a hardcourt
Speaker 1: kid since I was in elementary school and the such
Speaker 1: stuff you should know fans since high school, I was
Speaker 1: stoked to see these two very different things that I
Speaker 1: listened to come together. First of all, I'm sorry you
Speaker 1: guys ever felt intimidated by punks. Uh. The time when
Speaker 1: punk quote died end quote is really when the scene
Speaker 1: got in general way more enjoyable to be a part of.
Speaker 1: The old heads got jobs and families and stopped coming
Speaker 1: out to shows that weren't the bands they listened to
Speaker 1: coming up, So the kids took over and created a
Speaker 1: more positive and inviting environment. In my lifetime, I've seen
Speaker 1: this go even for there. In the last ten years
Speaker 1: or so, hardcore fans have gone from at times hyper masculine,
Speaker 1: you know what, UH measuring contests to a safe place
Speaker 1: for queer kids and people of color to talk about
Speaker 1: their struggles. The scene is very much alive from my
Speaker 1: birthplace in the Upper Midwest. Do I currently live in Appalachia.
Speaker 1: I am in the early stages of running d I
Speaker 1: Y shows out of my basement. So if you ever
Speaker 1: want to go to a hardcore show, just let me
Speaker 1: know and make the drive up to Knoxville. Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I promise I won't let anyone beat you up for
Speaker 1: calling the sex pistols punk. Wink wink. Thanks for all
Speaker 1: the great listening you guys provided me over the years,
Speaker 1: and please keep delving into different genres even if you
Speaker 1: feel out of your depths. That is from Evan and Uh.
Speaker 1: You also sent a very nice ps. It's just about
Speaker 1: how we've been there for him and and we want
Speaker 1: to say thanks for that too. Evan. That's really cool man.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Evan, and also, I mean, hats off
Speaker 1: for having hardcore shows in your basement. It's awesome. That
Speaker 1: is very awesome. Well, if you want to be like
Speaker 1: Evan and be super cool and hardcore and also super
Speaker 1: inclusive and nice, we want to hear from you. You
Speaker 1: can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: and check us out on social media while I pulled
Speaker 1: that one out, or you can send us an email
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.