Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How the US Interstate System Works

Transcript

How the US Interstate System Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, Stuff you should Know listeners, if you want to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: come see s Live, You've only got a couple of
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: more cities this year that still have tickets, and that
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: is Orlando in New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: on October nine at the Plaza Live, and we'll be
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: October t and friends like Chuck said, you better go
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: get your tickets. Go to s Y s K live
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: dot com for info and ticket links and everything you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and the three
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of us are um going riding on the Freeway of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Love and a pink Cadillac. There's no looking back. Jack.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Who is that Aretha? Yes? A good song for later
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: stuff for sure. That and then knew you were waiting
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: with George Mike Leving. Come on, yeah, I mean it
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't hold up to me for the against like the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: stuff from the sixties and seventies. But you're like, it's
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: no Zeppelin. I'm just talking about Aretha's earlier work. I know,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I know what you mean. I felt like I would
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: have liked to have seen her sing with Zeppelin. That
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: would have been neat. Yeah, what what would have it? Songs?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: She would have song? I don't know, But how about
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of love? A whole lot of love?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We'll go with that one. All right, We're getting in
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to get to reanimating Aretha and John Bonham mm hmmm, alright, Chuck,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: enough of this. It's high time that we got to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: talking about the United States Highway Interstate system. Yeah. I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: love this stuff, are you too? You know? I was like,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: what is it about this that I do love? Because
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I've been meaning to do this one for a really
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: long time. And I guess it's the fact that it's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a huge mass of public works. That's where it gets
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: civil engineering. We kind of have a thing for civil engineering,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: don't we. I think so man like subways and bridges
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and like all that stuff seems to delight both of us.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: But then also the other thing I like about it
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: that really kind of came to the to the fore
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: through this research is the enormous impacts, both like good
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and bad that this huge, massive, sweeping public work project
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: had on on America and still has today like just
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: completely restructured America inside and out. Yeah, and this also
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: makes me want to do a commission a piece on
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the suburbs. Yes, dude, I think that's a great idea.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: That's a that's a big one to unpack and commission
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a piece. I'm glad you said that because this was uh,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: this is based on an article written by the great
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: egg Grabanowski, the Grabster. That's right. So um, we should
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: probably say what we're talking about. If you've never been
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to the United States, or if you've never been out
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of your house and you live in the United States,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the America has um a really extensive system of roadways,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: like really really fast, really well designed interstates. That's what
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: they're called. They're highways, their expressways, speedways, whatever you want
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to call them. But they connect every major city in
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the United States to every other major city in the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: United States. You can get anywhere from anywhere, and there's
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: something like forty eight thousand plus miles of interstate just interstate,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: not not highways, not by ways, not roads. I think
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that comes to something like a hundred and fifty thousand miles,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: but there's like forty eight thousand miles of just this
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: incredibly well engineered, well constructed, super fast UM road artery
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: system cardiovascular system for cars in the United States. Yeah,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it's kind of what looks like sometimes on a map.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: For sure. It's like a central nervous system for the US.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So shall we go back in time a bit? Though?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I think we should, but we had to lay down
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: while we were talking about first in complete UM contrariness
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: to the standard s Y s K. Fan. That's right, Okay,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So let's go back in time, Chuck. So we're going
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the twentieth century here and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: at the time roads in the United States, and we're
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: talking about, you know, roads outside of the major, major
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: urban centers. Uh, they had a little bit better roads,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: but the rural roads were not good by any standard.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: They were dirt roads. So when it rained, and we're
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: not even talking gravel roads, we mean literally dirt roads, um,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: which seems like a catch all tern but a gravel
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: road is much much better than a dirt road because
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I've lived on both. Oh fancy, man, you lived on
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a gravel road. Yeah, growing up, had a gravel road
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: until I was like ten or eleven they paved it.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: When did you live on a dirt road before they
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: put gravel down? Okay, so you looked on the same road,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: but it was a dirt road once and then so
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I think when they put the gravel down, that's called
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: an improved road. Yeah, I went from dirt to gravel
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: improved two paved, which I and I said this on
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: one episode, but I remember very distinctly they paved it
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: after my whole life going up that gravel road. It
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: felt like we were driving on putting. Oh. Yeah, it
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was so smooth and weird and we felt so modern.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So so you grew up on a road back in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: nineteen o six, chewing tobaccy and working in the mines,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Is that is that where you grew up? Uh? No,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it was the seventies. But it was just a dead
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: end road. It wasn't a big neighborhood, which talked about before.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I bet that was a pretty big difference in um
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: in in feeling. When you had it paved, it was
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: really weird. But rural roads at the early twenty century
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: were dirt and when it rained, it was terrible mud.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And then when that dried up. There were terrible ruts,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and it was not the biggest deal at the time
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: because cars were still pretty new and we're very much
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: for the rich. But the horse and buggy and the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: horse drawn carriage did not enjoy these roads either. Sure No,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and then um, another mode of transportation, the bicycle, actually
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: created something called the better roads movement. Good roads, good
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: roads movement. I like mine better. Yeah, you got good,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: but wouldn't we rather have better? Sure in the meeting,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: let's think old timey folks. So um, the good roads
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: movement was was created by bicycle enthusiasts who said, like,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: these you know, dirt track, muddy roads aren't gonna work
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: for bikes. And when people started using automobiles, especially like
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you said, wealthy people, at first they were like, these
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: bike people are onto something. I'm a car guy, but
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the same apply. So let's kind of adopt this good
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: road movement and we're gonna start agitating for better roads.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And those better roads are, like you said, just laying
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: down a layer of gravel was a vast improvement over
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: what they had before. Yeah, and there was also UM
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: legislation in for what's called rural free Delivery RFD. Mail
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: because at the time, if you lived in the country,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you went and picked up your mail, they didn't bring
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: it to you. It seems appropriate, and so in they
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: finally passed legislation that said, you know, we need to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: get mail to people, and that was a big part
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of improving the roads as well. They're never gonna find
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: out about Circuit City's newest sale if we don't get
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: them their mail out in the out in the rural sticks.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: That's right. So, um, there are people agitating for road improvement,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: but at the time it was it was kind of
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: take and on by the wealthy people who owned cars, um, industrialists,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: philanthropist benefactors. This is all like within the first twenty
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: twenty years of the twentieth century, I think, um, where
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: clubs were formed where they said we're going to take
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: over responsibility for improving roads and just basically getting things
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: up to snuff so that um, you know, we can
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: drive our cars on these things. And I think they
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: did it fairly locally at first, but by the Lincoln
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Highway was built, and that was the first transcontinental highway
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that was basically built four cars. Yeah, I went from
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And it didn't just carve it out of you know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: barren earth. That used a lot of the roads that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: are already there, improved on those connected stuff together. Uh.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: There was a dude named Carl G. Fisher. Did you
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: look into this guy. Yeah, he was an entrepreneur from Indiana,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: real estate mogul and really big time auto slash auto
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: raceing enthusiasts who had a way of marketing and like
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: drumming up support for stuff like this. Yeah, he was.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: He was big time into racing cars. But he had
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: like such severe stigmatism. He had like coke bottle glasses.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But he's still raced cars and um, he actually set
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the record, the land speed automobile record. He made it
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: around a two mile. He made it around a track
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: two miles on a track in two minutes. Broke the record.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: That's not a joke. That's adorable. It is. It's pretty cute,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, he had he had the calm down.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: He took five days for his nerves to you know
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: stabilize after that top speed. But he was the champion
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of this highway, of the Lincoln Highway. Um, it became
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: famous for you know, kind of like Root six sixty six,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: We did an episode on that, Um, Lincoln Highway was
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: notable for its famous roadside giants and attraction and things,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: just like Root sixty six was yep, so then um,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: but still there was this idea that that private groups
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of auto enthusiasts were kind of the ones who are
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: responsible for taking care of roads or designating highways, that
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. And this group called the American Association
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of State Highway Officials now it's the American Association of
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: State Highway and Transportation Officials. They sound like this very um,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: legal important group, and they are, but they're not an
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: actual like government group. They're non government organization that basically
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: started and I think nineteen fourteen saying we're in charge
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: of saying what the best practices are for roads, what
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: roads should be made into highways, And they managed to
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: basically insinuate themselves in between the government and the highway
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: system and said, hey, these roads should be highways. Why
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: don't you go fund and improve these these roads right
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: here in the government said sure, we'll do that, and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: that's kind of how we started to get our first
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: highway system. Yeah, so they were nineteen fourteen. Then two
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: years later the Federal Aid Road Act came along to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: provide funding, and I guess future libertarians started to weep
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: because the public couldn't take care of their own roads anymore,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: or maybe they were sad because it came clear that
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the public taking care of its own roads was not
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a workable solution for the future. So they had to
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: rely on the federal government to come in and they did.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And this this group, uh, as you said, now, the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: A s h t O. Not only did they designate
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: highways and connect cities, but they said, you know, you
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: should get funds, this road should be improved. We need
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to get a numbering system, we need to get signage
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. And we'll get to the numbering system.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But the basics of it are that highways are numbered
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: in reverse order from inner states, because what you don't
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: want is like those numbers to be too close to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: one another, right, which is which I actually led to.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: One of the corks of the US interstate system is
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: that there's actually no I fifty in the United States
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: because there's a US Highway fifty and they would be
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in the exact same spot basically, and US Highway fifty
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I looked into It's called the loneliest road in America
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: because it goes through some of the most desolate stretches
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in the entire country. Doesn't look like a fun trip
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to me. Where where does it go through? Um? The
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: flyover states basically the drive through states kind of yeah,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: but it's like it goes I can't remember exactly where
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: it goes through, but from from what I was reading,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: it's like there's huge long stretches between gas stations and
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: towns and stuff like that, far more than the average
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: even back road highway. Interesting. I'm wondering. I'm just trying
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: to think if I've been on it. I'll have to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: look at the map I looked. I wondered if you,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: me and I have been on it between Scottsdale in
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas, because I was like, man, we were death
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: really on desolate stretches. No, that was I think like
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: ninety three or something like that, or sixty maybe sixty.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't fifty though. Yeah. When I did my big
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Outwest trips, I was definitely on some roads where I thought,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: if I have car trouble, I'm you know, the buzzards
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: will be circling doomed. Yeah. Yeah, so the highway systems going,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: not the interstate system yet. Yeah, that's a big, big
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: thing to remember. We're talking about two different things here, Yeah,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: big deaf because these roads were still many, most of
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: them two lane roads, and they still had some you know,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: dangerous curves, and they had stop lights, and they went
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: through little towns in big towns, and they were just
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: connected together at least that's right. So around this time, though,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: is this highway system is is um coming along and improving.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: They were just constantly adding to it and designating new
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: roads that were you know, traditional horse and buggy paths
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to be improved into US highways. The autumn beal is
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: becoming more and more important. Is going from you know,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a luxury of the very rich to something that just
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: about every American was starting to depend on, especially people
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: who didn't live in the center of a city. So um,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: as the car gets more important, the highways start to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: get more and more important, and people started to say, look,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I think we might be able to do better than
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: what we have now. And that actually was the fire
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that ignited the interstate system as we understand it today.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: That sounds like a great time to stop. As I
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: was saying at Chuck, I was like, God, this is
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: such a great segue into a message. Yeah, we'll take
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: a little break and come back and talk about FDR
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: right after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: from Josh Camp Chuck stuff you should know? All right?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: All right, So highways are being built, they're being connected.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: But uh, in N seven, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, here's
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a plan. Uh to the Bureau Public Roads, it's seven
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: they're six super highways. And everyone went, what he's like,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: these are going to connect our nation. And they had
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: all these reports done and that sort of formed the
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: basis of what would become our highway system. But we
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford to do this at the time. World War
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: two came along and everything just sort of was put
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: on hold, right um understandably so. But then afterward America
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: was like, man, we've got a lot of money. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: from what I've read, there was a concern that this
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: post war boom that had been generated by World War two,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: because you know, one of the big knock on effects
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: of World War two, it pulled us right out of
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the great depression and put us into a pretty great
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: um boom period. I think they were scared to death
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: that we were going to go back to a recession
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: or lose this boom. And so some people say that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: one of the main reasons, one of the great unstated
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: reasons for why the federal government was suddenly so um
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: happy over the idea of spending billions and billions and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars to create this interstate system was to
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: put significant numbers of people to work and just flood
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the economy throughout the entire country with government money to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: um just keep that post war boom going. And it
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: worked like an absolute charm. It still works. I mean,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that's still a stimulus package that's reliable is a lot
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: of times now it's improving stuff obviously, but you know,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that's what a lot of presidents turned to, like, let's
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: get people working on these roads that are falling apart. Yeah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: look at these slackers, Somebody give them some asphalt. So
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower is obviously most associated with the interstate system because
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: it was when he was in office and he pushed
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: for the Federal Aid Highway Act of nineteen fifty six,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: which really kind of made everything legit um. For many reasons,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: this was like a very necessary thing, not least of
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: which was for the military. We talked about, you know,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: since World War One, we needed bigger roads, Like we
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: didn't have railroad capacity to take all the armaments and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: all the things we needed and supplies, and then we
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: didn't have the highways that could do it either. So
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: in nineteen one, this guy named Thomas McDonald, he's ahead
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of the Bureau of Public Roads. He and his staff
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: really drew up this this map, this proposed system of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: seventy eight thousand miles. Handed it over to General John Pershing,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: who presented it to Congress and said, we need these
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: for you know, this is critical for the military. Became
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: known as the Pershing Map, even though he just handed
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: it over to Congress. It should be the Thomas McDonald map. Sure,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: but nobody knew who he was, and they would have
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: been like, get out of here, McDonald, you know, buddy,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: probably General Pershing. They were like yes, sir, and like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: clicked their heels together and started building things. So, but
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that was back in the twenties. I think that the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Pershing map was handed over right, but it was apparently
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: such a good map. The pershing slash McDonald map. That's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna read, Christen it okay, Yeah, And it
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: was pretty I mean they drew it up in a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: way that made sense. But it wasn't like here's your
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: exact blueprint. It's just like we've connected all the places
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: we think we should connect. But it was basically the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: general blueprint that was used for the interstate system. So
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: it was pretty pretty well done map. As Yes, it
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't research, but they weren't you know, thirty years later
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: they didn't go with this McDonald guy was way off there,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: basically like this this works really well, that's right. An
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower himself had traveled the Lincoln Highway during World War
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: One in a military convoy and he was like this
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: kind of stinks. And all the military brass in Europe
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: saw the Auto Bahn and they saw the highways in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Italy and they were like, we need some of this stuff.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Plus also not just the military, but related to the military.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: This was done during the Cold War. You know, this
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: is nineteen fifty six that the legislation was signed into
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: law to create the interstate and this is you know,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a pretty uneasy time. So there was a real concern
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that with the existing original US highway system, if atomic
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: bombs started getting dropped out of the United States, we'd
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: have a really hard time moving people from place to place,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: from bomb cities to unaffected cities. And um, this interstate
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: was a big solution to that too. Yeah. And uh,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: not to oversell the military importance, but it was literally
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: called at first the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, right,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: defense highways. Yeah. Interesting, At least it's not the offense highways,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, they're real aggressive, the pokey
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: in the chest where they're talking to you. So. Um.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: There was another another reason. There's a whole list of reasons.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: A lot of people say, oh, it's all military. That's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that was large part of it, but that certainly was
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: not the only reason that the interstates were built in
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the United States. Another one was that people were starting
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to move into the cities more and more, and they
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: had been for decades already. People were moving, leaving their
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: farms for factories. But this is putting an enormous strain
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: on the cities themselves, as huge influx of people that
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure couldn't really support. So they said, well, wait,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a minute. If we build these interstates, we'll be able
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to more easily connect these rural areas with the cities.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And then I've got this genius idea that people can
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: continue to live in the rural areas but go to
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and from work each day in the city. What do
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you think of out that? And everyone said, that's that's
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: probably the best most flawless idea anyone's ever had in
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the history of the world. Right, and then que upcoming
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: podcast on the suburbs, right exactly and excerbs nice. I
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: think we just did like a choose your own adventure
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: wedge in their trucks is pretty sweet. Another couple of reasons, uh,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: leisure travel. You know, people hitting getting in their car
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: with the family and going on a vacation, driving across
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: country to see these roadside attractions and stay in hotels
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: and swimming swimming pools. It was all very new stuff
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in America. Safety interstates, no matter which way you slice it,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: are a lot safer, even though you're going faster, a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: lot safer than these highways that they had out there. Yeah,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: which is really funny to think of if like I
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: think of highways like crash on a highway it's just
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: like you know, limbs everywhere and just blood all over
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the place. But the thing is like, yes, you you
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: can get into big serious trouble going very fast on
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: on the highway or on an interstate. But on a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: highway you don't have things like this designated um set
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: distance between the incoming and on oncoming traffic. UM. You
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: don't have like gentle slopes to the shoulders so that
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: if you do, you know, fall off the side of
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the road, you're not necessarily go yeah, you're not necessarily
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: going to bear overall. You might just like keep driving straight.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: There's all these designs that are created to make highways safer,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: interstates safer than highways, And part of it is like
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: you can't get in an head on collision with another car.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: It's basically impossible on a United States interstates. Well, and yeah,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: unless somebody gets on going the wrong way, which happens,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: it does happen very infrequently, but under normal conditions, you're
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: not gonna veer out of your lane. You'll veer into
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the median and go, what the heck happened? I'm driving
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: on grass right exactly the other the other there's two
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: other things that make interstates distinct from highways that improve
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: their safety safety tremendously. One is that there's there controlled
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: h entrance and exits right. So that means that when
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you get onto a highway or an interstate, man, I'm
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: gonna do that all episode apparently you're you're traveling in
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the same direction as traffic and ideally at speed. So
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I remember very distinctly in UH driver's ed the first
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: time I emerged onto the highway and how nerve wracking
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that is, and the dude telling me to punch it,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, but the speed limit and he was
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: he was correct, He was correct, and saying like, no, man,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, like you gotta go as fast as
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: they're going or it's dangerous. That's right, But that's a
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that's a huge difference. Then, say like a highway where
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: somebody turns right into traffic and all the people behind
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: them have to slow while they speed up to the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: flow of traffic. So that's a huge thing. And then
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: also the reason why people don't turn right onto the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: highway is because any criss cross with the interstate, I
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: should say, did it again, any any criss cross with it,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: um is goes over like it's a bridge. You have
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: an overpass. That's how you get across the highway. There's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: no stop lights, there's no you know, somebody just driving,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you know, perpendicular with the flow of traffic. You go
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: over that with an interstate I love it. At the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: beginning of this, he said, this is a very important distinction.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: You should have said, which I will fail to make
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: over and over, which I will blur in your mind forever. Uh.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And then the other one of the other big things,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: you know, and Ed said, they don't have stop lights. Um,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: there are traffic lights now and a lot of cities
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: to more safely get you onto the highway, but they
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: still give you enough ramp time to get up to speed.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: That's it. That's for to ease congestion. Yeah, just so
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: there's not a hundred cars trying to pile on it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: One it's it's one car every whatever, three or four seconds.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about that in our traffic episode.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Not pretty sure like that really really helps ease congestion. Traffic. Yeah,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that yeah, you coin that I did, didn't I didn't
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I break bubble one of the bubbles. I think it
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: was the break bubble. I think so I certainly talked
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: about a lot. I remember that. Uh. And then one
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: of the other big reasons kind of to kind of
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: jump back here, why we needed these highways. I'm sorry,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: here we go again, interstates with simple economics. If you
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: could get these, uh, urban centers connected to rural towns
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and these efficient roads where you could ship goods faster
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and further than you ever have, and extend the range
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of the workforce more than you ever have, It's just
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: cannot be overstated what that did for the American economy. Yeah,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: because I mean connecting those rural areas and eventually suburban areas.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It's like you have a way bigger workforce pool if
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: you're a company located downtown then you did with these highways,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, the commute would have just been unsustainable, unbearable.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I mean it's already bad enough on the interstates, but
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: with just you know, original US highways, it just wouldn't
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you couldn't do it. Here's to me, one of the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: more interesting parts of this is that originally the US
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: interstate system and Eisenhower wanted them to all be toll
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: roads because he's like, what's better than having something that
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: people just it pays for itself. But they did all
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: these studies and it turns out, and I think this
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: is still pretty much true, toll roads aren't a super
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: great idea. And there have to be very specific conditions
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: where in a toll road will actually pay for itself
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: or even you know, bring in a profit right like
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: you have. It has to be in a very um
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: heavily trafficked area, and then there has to be basically
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: no other alternative but that road to get from point
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: to point be Otherwise people are just gonna say I'm
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: gonna save my nickel or whatever it was back then.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: That's why remember four hundred Georgia four hundred. It was
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: really successful as a toll road because it was so
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: successful that it paid for the road. It paid for
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: itself within twenty years, and they ripped the toll booths
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: out because Republicans were in charge of the time. They
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: said no more tolls. Do you remember, Yeah? I think
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they were up longer than they said they were going
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: to be up, though, and people started complaining like, hey,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I thought the plan was these are going down. Yeah.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And Sonny Perdue, I think, was the guy who was like,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: all right, we're getting rid of them, or maybe it
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: was deal, I can't remember. But the the reason four
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hundred was so successful as a toll roads because there
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: really weren't very many other ways to to get you know,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: from uh, the Buckhead area of Atlanta up to the
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: northern north Eastern suburbs except for four hundred. Yeah, that
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: was I mean, I don't I don't have to pay
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: two dollars to go see my brother now, and I
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: had to do that for many years, except for the
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: two dollars he charges me when I show up at
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: his front door to play is Adams Family Pimball, He's like,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: give me two dollars. It has to be a two
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: dollar bill to will not accept anything else. That's so
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: scott so um. The toll roads don't pay for themselves.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: One reason why I chuck. They don't typically pay for
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: themselves because especially if you're talking about interstates, there's really
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: long stretches of interstate that are not heavily traffics and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: you would have to pay for that with the toll Well,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: if somebody's coming through, you know, once a day and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: paying a dollar, that's not going to pay for the upkeep.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So much so that they actually there was a study
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that was done I think ahead of time. Uh that
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: when they were planning the interstates, and they found that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of these, even like fairly successful toll roads
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: or toll interstates, probably would just barely pay for the
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: salaries of the tollbooth workers. So like that's a wash
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of all washes. So they said, okay, no toll roads.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: How about instead we'll start taxing gasoline. Yeah, not just gasoline,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: but let's let's propose a bill that taxes the rubber
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: industry because of tires um the trucking industry, and they
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: all said, no, I don't want to be taxed forget this.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I don't like it. So they said, all right, we're
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: not gonna do this. Yeah, they managed to beat the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: bill to create the interstate system. Yeah, they beat it down. Uh,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Congress goes into recession. And then the trucking industry went, uh,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: what do we just do because this actually would have
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: been a really great thing for trucking. Uh, and so
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: maybe we do want that after all. And they came
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: back with a different bill that was pretty much the same,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and that one passed. Yeah, and you can understand why
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: they were They were a little shortsighted. They said, well,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: we don't want to pay extra for tires and for gasoline.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: We used that stuff, but then somebody crunches the numbers
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and said, well everybody showed up. But the idea that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: that it would be done through tax dollars rather than
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: toll roads. That was a big um result of a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: PR push that was taken up by UM, the Triple A,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: General Motors, other car companies. They formed something called the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: National Highway Users Conference and UM. From this they basically
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: managed to create this this change of mentality in Americans
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: minds from oh yeah, roads are created and supported by
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: rich people and auto enthusiasts too. It is a national
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: duty to build and maintain roads, and it is the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: federal government's responsibility to create inner states. And that was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the result of a PR push. And part of that
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: PR push is how we got freeways. That was meant
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: to really kind of point out how bad an idea
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: toll roads were. The ideas you don't want toll roads,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you want free roads, which came to be called freeways,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and freeways are basically supported by gas tax. That's great,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I thought so too. That's a good little dinner party
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: if you want to be super obnoxious. Yeah, oh, you
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: drove over on the freeway. You know where they can that.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: So the inshot of all this, or the upshot I
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: guess there is no inshot, is that these taxes would
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: be placed into the Highway Trust Fund, and it's a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: pretty good deal for for states. It's sort of like
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Social Security. The government is going to tax uh letty
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: these taxes to pay for more highways, but provide of
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: that funding to states to do it themselves. So the states,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: they're getting lots of jobs created, these big, huge public
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: works projects, they only have to pay ten percent of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: that and they get a highway on top of that. Yeah. So,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: like mayors and governors loved this idea because it made
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: them look like they were just so like all this
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: job creation and economic growth was happening under them, and
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: it just got dropped in their laps by by Ike
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and the Feds and they're only on the hook for
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: ten percent of it. And the idea was every American
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: city with at least fifty people, uh, we're going to
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: connect to them all within thirteen years, which did not happen. No,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: it didn't. As a matter of fact, officially, the first
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: UM original plan was completed in Yeah, it was a
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: little more than thirteen years from nineteen fifty six. Yeah,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and that points out it's i mean, it's technically finished,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: but it's never finished. It's always being worked on and
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: tweaked and changed here and there. Ye, so Chuck. Before
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: they got started, they had to actually do some research first.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: This is pretty cool. They didn't just say, sure, we
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: we've been building highways, we know how to build interstates. Um,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: They really, you know, did a lot of examination on
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: how to best build these because the interstate is much
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: different from the highway. Like the highway just kind of
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: went around, Um, the terrain and the landscape. It was
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: bent to the will of the landscape, subservient to it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Interstates are not like that. They are American muscle carving
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: through mother Earth. Were over that. Interstate wants to go
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: fast as you please. And they use something called cut
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and fill, which is exactly what it sounds like. They
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: just cut out the track for the interstate and then
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: they filled it with the stuff that makes up the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: interstate roads. But to figure out what to use for
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the interstate roads, they actually did a tremendous amount of
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: research first. Yeah, they this is really cool. They built
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: these test tracks near Chicago, Illinois, and assigned a U. S.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Army company to live there for two years and load
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: up trucks and drive them around nineteen hours every day
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: for two years. Sounds so awful to see, Like, you know,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: you can't just willy nilly build a road that's supposed
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: to last forever, you know, with with upkeep obviously, but
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: you got to really really test the stuff out over
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: time and wait and duration to to make sure that
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it holds up. So they had to do all this
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to determine how thick it needed to be, in what
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the layers need to be, and what the final player
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: is going to be. And uh, not only that, they
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: had to decide like hey, what about signage, It's got
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: to be all the same. Uh. They ended up settling
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: on green with reverse messaging, so green background white lettering,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: which apparently is they did test. It's more visible if
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: you have a reverse message then the other way around,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: especially at night, rather than like say, black letters on
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a white field. Yeah, exactly. Which speed limit signs are
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: like that, but you know they they have to distinguish
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: like the exit signs and the highway signs because the
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: actual highway badge interstate badge is blue and red, red,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: white and blue. I guess if you count the white.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I just got that. Yeah, there's white on their right
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and the outlined in white. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: And they tested colors. They decided green generally means go,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: so we're gonna stick with green. Uh, but red, white,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and blue for the shields for interstates, but green shields
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: for business loops and spur Oh yeah when you see
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: this weird thing, Yeah, it does look a little weird.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: But the the font that they used is actually on
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: the green signs in particulars called highway Gothic, which is great,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: which I feel like we've talked about that before. I'll
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: bet it was in the Traffic episode now that I
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: think about it. Yeah. Yeah, So they get all this
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: stuff done, they figured it out. The poor army company
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that had to live on these tracks in Chicago for
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: two years are all discharged. Um, and the building begins.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't really go according to plan. Like we
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: said that it was supposed to take thirteen years to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: complete the first forty thousand miles of interstate, and they completed,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: but they ran into issues pretty much from the get
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: go quick question. When you say they were discharged, you
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: mean they just stopped that project. I'm I'm assuming here
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that they were discharged because they were just they were
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: forced to do that for two years that they said,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: you're fine. You don't have to do anything else because
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: you're out of the army, right if you want to be.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: And here's some extra money. Uh. This Yellow Book comes
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: into play here, and this is when the what the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: federal officials um finally officially submitted as the proposed map. Uh.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: And this one, much like the Perching map, wasn't super detailed,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: just had rough lines and spurs and belt ways. And
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, states, since you're getting a really
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: sweet deal here, you need to figure out how best
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: to do this within your state. Right. So, um, before
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: we go on actually talk about what happened when they
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: started building it, you want to take a last break. Yeah,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay. Yeah. Well, now we're on the road,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: two from Josh Damp Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: all right, Okay, Chuck. So, when you're building an interstate
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and you're building it through pasture land or fields, or
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: you know, even desert whatever, UM, sparsely inhabited regions, you
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: don't run into too much problem. You can do it
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: fairly cheaply, you can do it pretty quickly. Um. There's
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: just not a lot of stuff you have to get
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: done aside from building the road. But when you start
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: to approach cities, everything changes. It gets way more expensive,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: it takes way longer, and the the effects that it
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: has on that area, on the city can be really
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: really bad. And when they started to approach these cities
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and started creating the interstate system around the cities, UM,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: some some towns, especially the well to do wealthier people
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: in the towns, said whoa, whoa, wait, this map shows
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: this highway going through my neighborhood and that's not happening.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: That's not going to happen. And there were what we're
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: called highway revolts where local local groups, sometimes in in
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: um collaboration with UH, like local politicians who felt the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: same way or probably lived in the same areas, kind
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of rose up against the Feds or even the state
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: government and said this is we need to re plan
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: where this highway is going. And some were successful. There's
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: one in northwest DC that never got built, and there
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: was one probably the most famous of all was the
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: one in Manhattan that was led by Jane Jacobs, who
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: wrote the Life and Death of Great American Cities, who
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: took on Robert Moses, the guy who revamped Central Park
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: into what it is now today. And one because they
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: were going to build the Interstate right through Soho, the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Lower east Side, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and Little Italy. They
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: were just gonna tear it up and go right through there,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and Jane Jacobs managed to stave it off. Yeah. It
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: was you know when the when the rich people said
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: not in my neighborhood. What do you what do you
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: think happened? They went to the people that couldn't fight
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: back as much. They ran them through poor neighborhoods, use
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: eminent domain to kick people out. Uh. And there was
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: some grassroots, grassroots resistance and like you said, sometimes it worked,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: but most times it did not. Yeah, and so this
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: is this is in cities where there was resistance. There
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: were plenty of cities who are like, this is going
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: to be breathe new life into our city. So that's fine,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: tear down whatever you want. Let's get this super highway
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of the future going through you know, uh, Topeka, Sure,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm pretty sure forty goes through Topeka or Manhattan, Kansas. Okay, sure, Manhattan,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Kansas to get it in New York. It's ironic that
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: we said that because UM, the first UM, the first
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: project that was started on the interstate system began in
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Kansas and Missouri. Is that right? Yeah? I seventy Kansas
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and Missouri as usual leading the country forward in progressive
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: new ways. That's right. And then in the reason why
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: they consider the interstate system having been completed is because
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that section I think it's ice seventy, not forty UM
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: was completed in Kansas, connected onto itself and they said
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: we're done. Yeah, it's seventy. So I think we should
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about just some of the nuts
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and bolts of UM, what an interstate is, and what
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: they needed to be. When they were first designing these
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: we talked about getting away from you know, they need
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: to go fast and they need to be safe. Those
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: are like the two big requirements. So all these big
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: curvy roads and absence of sight lines and blind bends
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: and things that you had in the highway system was
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: no good super steep grades so they wanted to streamline
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: all that make it more gentle, good sight lines, nice
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and straight. You gotta have at least two traffic lanes
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: in each direction for the divided interstate. You know, now
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: we have what are we max out Atlanta, like six
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: or eight lanes across. It's gonna be eleven. The plan
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: is for eleven on each side eventually, so twenty two
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: lanes of traffic. It's just gonna be a monstrosity. Oh boy.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: The lanes and shoulders have minimum ws twelve feet for lanes,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: ten feet for shoulders, and four feet for the that
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: very scary inside shoulder which you never want to be
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: pulled over on. UH. And then as far as speed
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: limit goes, it's sort of varied over the years. I remember,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: UH after nineteen seventy four. I mean it was only
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: three in nineteen seventy four, but that is when the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: fifty five mile per hour speed limit was mandated. UH
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: in most states. UH, if you wanted to receive federal
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: funding for highway projects, get in line with that, because
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: you went on we had the gas crisis, oil crisis,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: So if you wanted your dough, drop it to fifty five.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: And it was fifty five for a while, Jammy Hagar
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: wrote a song about it. Oh yeah, he couldn't drive it. No,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: despite you know, the um the oil crisis, he just
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: could not drive it. But I remember when they started
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: relaxing that and when sixty and seventy started popping up,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: it was just like it was a really big deal. Hey,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever told you this or not,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: but Sammy Hagar's son is a fan of stuff. You
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: should he is. He wrote in um Maybe to the
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: End of the World to one of them and basically said, hey,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I heard you guys shout out my dad or make
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a joke about, you know, Sammy Hagar or whatever. I
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: just want you to know I'm a big fan. And
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: he sent a picture of him and his dad hanging
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: out on stage down in um Kabbo Sam Lucas. Yeah,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: so shout out to Sammy Hagar's boy, and I bet
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: you we made and I can't drive fifty five joke.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: We certainly did well. Emily is very famous for liking
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Van Hagar more than David Lee Roth van Halen. I
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: don't know why you have to choose, They're so different.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I liked him both. I went and saw Van Hagar
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: live on the o U eight one two tour in
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: high school and it was great. And I love that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: fifty one fifty album too. Man. I could air drum,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: air guitar and air ace that entire album. Could you
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: air keyboards? Um? Not very well, I have fat fingers.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Well that's sort of the most boring air instrument. Yeah,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: no it's not, but it's easy. It's the easy it's
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the best one to start out on. All right. Well,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: shout out to the Red Rocker and his son. Then,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: So Red Rocker, I haven't heard that one. Yeah, so
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: um Montrose that was his big band, is that right? Yeah?
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Before he went solo, he was in Montrose. Okay, I
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: didn't know that. I only knew him. I only picked
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: him up around that. I can't drive fifty. I hope
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: his son is listening, because he's probably quite delighted with Uh.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: He's like, my name, isn't Sammy Hagar's son? By the way, guys,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar's son Hagar. We should look up his name
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: because that would be very nice. Okay, are you doing it? Yes?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: All right, I'll just continue on. Are we are we
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: editing this little combo? Are yeah, we should have it
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: in there, and I'll talk about Montana because Montana. As
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: everyone knows, you don't mess with Montana. They like to
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: make up their own rules. They were they were very
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: famou what's his name? Oh man, he's got two sons,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Aaron and Andrew. It's one of the two. Maybe both
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: of them are fans. I bet you they are. Okay.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: So Montana is very famous for saying like, we just
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: are going to drive however fast we want to drive.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: We may not even have a speed limit. For a while,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: became known as the basic law, and it was the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: speed limit in the daytime was whatever is reasonable and
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: proper as determined by us. You hear me. No one's
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: gonna tell us like Sammy Hagar to drive fifty five.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Don't tread on me. I think that's er mind, okay,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: is it? No? That's the tea party, Aaron Hagar. I
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: just found it, Evan, So that forward that to me,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: will you? Yeah? Um? So Montana eventually, I think right
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: now they do have a daytime speed limit finally, but
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what it's probably like ninety five uh yeah,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: probably is pretty high up there, actually. But the idea
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: of just not having a posted a numerical speed limit
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: at they which apparently they did for a little while.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: That's just astounding. Yeah, but the idea of driving sixty
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: through rural Montana is ridiculous. Well, yeah, you need to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: be going eight right exactly. I'm guessing that the cops
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: probably look the other way. Yeah, cops in Montana, they
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: get smaller fish to fry. So, I mean, because you
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: can go so fast, that's the danger of the highways.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: But again, because it's closed access or controlled access where
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: there are very few places you can get on and off,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and those places are designated and designed for you to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: get on and off of the highway, that the rest
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of the highways just for go go going. Um, it
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: is typically safer. I don't think we said compared to
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: highways an interstate per million car miles driven, is it
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: a million million? I'm sorry, you're right, I believe per
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: hundred million. I'm I'm tapped ending here because I cannot
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: find it. Um, per hundred million car miles driven. I
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: know that the the interstate death talt rate is only
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: point eight two the highways. That's overgoing with stats wise,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I got it right here, friend, Um one point four
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: six deaths for all other US roads, that's per hundred
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: million vehicle miles driven. On interstates, it's point eight deaths
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: per hundred million vehicle miles driven. That's a substantial, almost
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: almost half the rate of fatality as every other US road.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: And it's because of the way it's designed. Even though
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: you can go really really fast, the thing is designed
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: like bumper bowl to where you can't really get a
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: gutter ball very easily. So here's the thing we talked about.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: All these uh, like you gotta have a media in
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: this big and you know, all these regulations that define
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: what an interstate is. Uh, it's not the case everywhere
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: you go. There are plenty of examples um of turnpikes
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and three ways that we're sort of grandfathered in here
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: and there. Um toll roads that were grandfathered in states
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: that don't have the medians that they need, or do
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: have some steep grades and curves just because of the
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: terrain and stuff, or you know, speed limit differences, and
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: they relax some of that here and there. So that
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: was that stuff was more of a general requirement, not
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: like the hard and fast rule and the fist will
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: come down and you will not be an interstate unless
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you have a medium that kind of thing. Right, Yeah,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the stuff that got grandfathered and it's still around. But
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: when they rebuild these roads or update them or improve them,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: which is constantly going on, you know they're going to
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: get rid of that light and put in an overpass instead.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: That's right. So when you have like a public works
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: project this big and supposedly this is the biggest in
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the history of human kind is does that? Does that
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: sound right? I mean that's some have said that, Okay,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: we're gonna go with that because we live in the USA. Um.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: But uh, when you have a project that big, it's
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: going to have some weird quirks and foibles and that
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, all the Dave Barry adjectives. Um. And
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: one of the things is that because of the way
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that some some roads come up against one another, you
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: have something called concurrency where sometimes two different interstates will
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: share the same roadbed for a stretch, and so you
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: can literally be driving on two different interstates by game. Right,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: And then one particular stretch of Virginia ten miles stretch
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: around where Virginia and Tennessee come together, there's a concurrent
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: stretch that's technically a wrong way concurrent stretch. Did you
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: know about this one? Yeah, So there's a stretch in
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Virginia Interstate eighty one in Interstate seventy seven, and they're concurrent.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: So when you're driving on this ten mile stretch, you're
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: on both of these these interstates. But the weird thing
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: is IS eighty one and seventy seven because they're odd
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: numbered highways or interstates, they run north to south, but
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: this ten mile stretch runs east to west. Pretty weird, right,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: it gets even weirder, Chuck for this wrong way concurrent
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: stretch of highway, this ten mile stretch, you're actually going
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: on I eighty one north but I seventy seven south
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: when the actual direction of travel you're on is going
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: east to west. Yeah. I mean when you think about
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: perimeters to uh, there are times in Atlanta around the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: five where you're you know, is it marked north or
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: is it marked west or is it mark south or
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: west or north and east. It's very confusing and on
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: where you are in that circle. Right, And we should
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: say that with with the interstate numbering system, we got
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about that it's not meant to be a
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: navigational guide. It's meant to keep from duplicating, um the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: same interstate route in different parts of the country, and
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: for the same interstate or for the same numbered interstates
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: to um come up against one another. They're meant to
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: keep everything quite separate. Yeah. From the beginning, they're like,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: get a map, people like, don't rely on these signs
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to get you places. So, so, if you were looking
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: at a map of the United States going from the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: west to the east, UM, odd number highways that run
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: run from north to south. The low numbers start in
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the west, So I five is the first one, and
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: that's over in California. That's right, Great Great Highway goes
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: up to which is on the eastern seaboard, Great Great Expressway,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and then in between you have all the other fives,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the odd number ones. They run from north to south.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Now east to west you have even numbered ones, and
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: they start at the lowest in the south, well, starting
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: with ten. I'm a big faded by twenty twenties. I've
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: driven that thing from here to California quite a few times, Okay,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: so I can see why you'd be a fan of
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: my twenty. Then it's a nice that's a nice drive
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: right there. They get you there, that's their motto. But
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: if you go up, up, up, you you ten sixty.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: There is no fifty. And apparently ED says the Department
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of Transportations used to get letters from people saying like
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: you guys, screwed up. There's no interstate fifty, oh people,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: which is hilarious. Too much time on their hands. Here's
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: an interesting thing. Alaska and Puerto Rico they don't have
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to meet these federal interstate standards, and technically they're not
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: federal interstates, their interstates in name only. And then in
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Hawaii you have three inner states, all on Oahu, and
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: they are designated with an H instead of an eye
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: instead of interstate. It's whatever. H. I don't even know.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I've never been there. What are what are the numbers?
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I think there's an H five maybe, but the thing
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: about it even weirder, and the fact that it's an
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: H instead of an eye, there's no dash. It looks
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: really like like Western European, like the like the M
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: five or whatever, like I see palm trees, but I
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm in Budapest right exactly. So what the
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: we talked about, Like at the very beginning, I said
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that like, one of the things that fascinates me are
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the massive sweeping effects that interstates have had on the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: United States. And a lot of people have studied the effects,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: and there have been some good and some bad. And
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I came across the forum I can't remember on what
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: um what site, but the question was is a net
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: gain or a net loss for America with the interstate systems?
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: And it seemed pretty evenly divided. You can make a
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: case both ways that you know, in these ways it helped.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: In these ways it was really terrible. And it's kind
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: of a subjective judgment whether when you add all those up,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: it was actually a gain for America or you know,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: a loss. Well, we already talked about safety definitely, say,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: for UH, if you listen to our Root sixty six episode,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: you'll hear lots of stories about quote unquote dead towns. UM.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: These these small towns and junctions where people traveled on
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: these pretty popular highways UH, and restaurants and local mom
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: and pops they went away, UH in large part because
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: of these expressways built right beside them sometimes and that
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: that real estate where you get off on these exits
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: is super expensive. So it's not like you're you're gonna
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: see very few, you know, mom paw restaurants at these exits.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: You're gonna see the major chains, the major gas stations,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: and major major restaurants and shopping centers. All right, they're
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: kind of congregated on the highways, right, So they produced
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: homogenus across America, the inter state there I go. But
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: that so that created this sense of homogeneity where it
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: was like the same national brands, the only ones who
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: are big enough to buy up this real estate were
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: the ones that you find at any given exit, you know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the same handful of them across the United States. So
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: it lost its local flavor for sure. That's a big effect.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: That's a huge loss for America. Yeah, rail use definitely declined. UM,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: trucking definitely improved or benefited at least. Uh what else?
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Ed says? Crime, which is something I never really thought about,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: but there have definitely been a lot of interstate killers
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: who could uh pick someone up at a truck stop
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: and kill them and get on that highway and get
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: out of there quick like. That was the I five strangler,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: the I seventy killer, UM, a series of murderers along
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I forty. I think that was like where they were
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: like people are driving around shooting other people at high
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: speeds on the highway. Do you remember that, like the
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: eight or nineties. Yeah, you can't have that without the interstate. No,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: So you know that's an effect. But another way that
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: it affected crime to UM is found really pronounced lee
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: in l A. Like l A became the bank robbery
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: capital of the world from what I understand, at least
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: the United States. And the reason why is because it's
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: massive system of interstates throughout the entire city. UM allowed
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: for really easy escape routes for bank robbers. I can
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: see that. There's a really great article by I think
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: his name's Jeff man Off Um. Anyway, he had the
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: he has like the the building blog and it's UM
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I'll see if I can find I'll
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: tweet it out. It's a really great article. I should
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: have looked it up. Yeah. So in the end, like
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: you said, I guess it's sort of split on how
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: people view this. It's hard to measure some of these
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: effects and put like a number on things like the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: death of the mom and pop store. Some of those
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: are a little more esoteric and emotional, but it is
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: interesting to think about. Yep, yeah, I like them too,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, it stinks that they're you know,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: they're super congested. Sometimes the cities better than suburbia, but
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: you know, the Interstates funneled people out into suburbia urban sprawl. Yeah. Um,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it's fascinating to think, like it's got the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: good and the bad. Just the sweeping effects are just
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: so ingrained that you're just they're tough to see sometimes,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I got one more thing, actually, the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: whole notion of the especially in California, of putting the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: word the in front of the highways on the two ten,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: the one oh one, whereas here on the East Coast
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: we say, uh, it is not just an l a thing.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Apparently it's a lot of the Western States, especially on
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: the West coast. Because my my friend and fellow podcaster
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Adam Pranica, was in Atlanta recently and he said, do
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I take of the twenty? I just thought it sounded
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: so funny, did you say, did you hit your head?
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: And he's a Seattle guy, so they definitely say it there,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: and I was just kind of curious where that came from.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: And that's just a holdover, like you mentioned California had
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: some of the first freeway, uh not interstates, but just
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: larger highways, and they had they were named. It was
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: before they were numbered. So this was in like the
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties. They had the Santa Monica Freeway, the Kawanga
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Pass Freeway. It was designated by where it went, and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: they were you know, it would make sense to put
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: a D in front of those, and that just sort
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: of held over. Once they started numbering him. They couldn't
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: shake it. But even still we still didn't use the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: back then because if you think about it, there was
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: a famous highway from Indiana down to Miami called Dixie Highway,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and here you call it Dixie Highway or Old Dixie Highway,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: not the Old Dixie Highway or the Dixie Highway. We
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: just don't like the here maybe so coast. It was
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: too hot and everybody had too much hookworms to say
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: the I guess it was unnecessary. So if this kind
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: of thing floated your boat, go check out UM. I
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: read some many good articles, but one was by Linda
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Poon on City Lab Look that up. Another was by
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a guy named Joseph Stromberg Vox. And then that Jeff
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Man in a Um, he doesn't have the building blog.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: He has. Cabinet is the name of his site. In
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: that article about l A being the bank robbery capital
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: is called forensic Topology and our own Grabster of course,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: hats off to Grabster. And since we said Grabster, that
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: means everybody's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: call this follow up on the punk episode. Hey, guys,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: just finished listening to your punk podcast. Being a hardcourt
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: kid since I was in elementary school and the such
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know fans since high school, I was
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: stoked to see these two very different things that I
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: listened to come together. First of all, I'm sorry you
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: guys ever felt intimidated by punks. Uh. The time when
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: punk quote died end quote is really when the scene
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: got in general way more enjoyable to be a part of.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: The old heads got jobs and families and stopped coming
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: out to shows that weren't the bands they listened to
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: coming up, So the kids took over and created a
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: more positive and inviting environment. In my lifetime, I've seen
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: this go even for there. In the last ten years
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: or so, hardcore fans have gone from at times hyper masculine,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: you know what, UH measuring contests to a safe place
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: for queer kids and people of color to talk about
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: their struggles. The scene is very much alive from my
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: birthplace in the Upper Midwest. Do I currently live in Appalachia.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: I am in the early stages of running d I
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Y shows out of my basement. So if you ever
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: want to go to a hardcore show, just let me
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: know and make the drive up to Knoxville. Okay, that's fair.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I promise I won't let anyone beat you up for
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: calling the sex pistols punk. Wink wink. Thanks for all
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: the great listening you guys provided me over the years,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and please keep delving into different genres even if you
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: feel out of your depths. That is from Evan and Uh.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: You also sent a very nice ps. It's just about
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: how we've been there for him and and we want
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to say thanks for that too. Evan. That's really cool man.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Evan, and also, I mean, hats off
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: for having hardcore shows in your basement. It's awesome. That
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: is very awesome. Well, if you want to be like
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Evan and be super cool and hardcore and also super
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: inclusive and nice, we want to hear from you. You
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and check us out on social media while I pulled
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: that one out, or you can send us an email
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: to stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.