No Interstate

WI the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which authorized the construction of the Eisenhower National Interstate system, hadn't been passed by Congress? Would the national interstate idea been brought up later or not at all?
 
The Bald Imposter said:
What would be the POD that would keep the bill from passing?

Following World War One, Eisenhower was part of a military experiment that crossed the country using the Lincoln Highway. Eisenhower wasn't happy with the state of America's roads, and was influenced by the German autobahn to push for a national highway system. So the PoD could be that Eisenhower doesn't run for reelection in 1956, and Democratic President Adali Stevenson doesn't sign the bill into law OR Eisenhower dies of a heart attack in 1951.
 
EvolvedSaurian said:
The Internet wasn't around yet.:D

It could kill the idea though, with WW2 being only 10 years behind.
The Interstate Highway System was designed for high speed transfers of military equipment. Most Congress Critters were aware that the Auto Bahn System had its orgins in the Nazi era,but another Boogie Man called the USSR made that a non starter as a arguement. The US doesn't automaticly reject good ideas just for who first thinks of it,it would have taken more than that to override the military need for a better ground transport system.
 
In Colorado . . . Governor Ed Johnson and others would fail to get a highway tunnel blasted under the Continental Divide. Therefore, without said tunnel, Summit County could fail to become a popular resort area with its ski areas, art festivals and other activities. (Without a tunnel, the areas on the west side of the Divide are inaccessible during the winter months. The road which crosses Loveland Pass is often closed.) Moreover, the resort areas of Vail and Aspen would not thrive.
 
Braniff said:
In Colorado . . . Governor Ed Johnson and others would fail to get a highway tunnel blasted under the Continental Divide. Therefore, without said tunnel, Summit County could fail to become a popular resort area with its ski areas, art festivals and other activities. (Without a tunnel, the areas on the west side of the Divide are inaccessible during the winter months. The road which crosses Loveland Pass is often closed.) Moreover, the resort areas of Vail and Aspen would not thrive.
Well a fairly obvious result of having no interstate system would be smaller suburbs and denser urban centers. Also I would imagine that the entire west in general would be alot less populated than in OTL although its possible that the southern and west coast sunbelt states would still thrive.
 
King Gorilla said:
Well a fairly obvious result of having no interstate system would be smaller suburbs and denser urban centers. Also I would imagine that the entire west in general would be alot less populated than in OTL although its possible that the southern and west coast sunbelt states would still thrive.

Another corollary: transit systems would have remained profitable longer as a result of denser urban centers. I suspect you'd still have electric transit (streetcars and trolley coaches) in a lot of cities where they've been history (for the most part) for years, such as Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, the Twin Cities, and Chicago (and no, I don't count single-instance installations such as Baltimore's light rail line). Indeed, even the Pacific Electric installation might still be alive and well in LA.

Another possibility: it's conceivable that a couple of the postwar independent automakers might have survived and merged into something that could at least run with the big boys. That is, I'd envision a grander version of American Motors, possibly incorporating Kaiser-Frazer along with Nash and Hudson (and maybe even Studebaker and Packard).

Also, I don't think the Sun Belt would be as populated as it is today, and that includes California. New York would probably be the most populous state still, with Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania right behind. California might be the fifth largest, but that would be about it.
 
Another possibility: it's conceivable that a couple of the postwar independent automakers might have survived and merged into something that could at least run with the big boys. That is, I'd envision a grander version of American Motors, possibly incorporating Kaiser-Frazer along with Nash and Hudson (and maybe even Studebaker and Packard).
I suspect just the opposite. Without easy intercity car traffic, they might die even sooner. Of course, something like Bantam might survive, providing cheap, small citycars. European imports (in particular Mini or Fiat 500) might be much more popular, while big Detroit iron might not be.

Greyhound would probably not exist; interurban or trolley would probably serve "short" routes where "heavy" rail doesn't.

And there's something most of us don't consider, since we take it so much for granted: the U.S. would be much more regional & less national. Chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, so forth, wouldn't be everywhere, since travellers would have much less demand for "sameness" (surety of quality & taste) wherever they go. Local restaurants, local customs, would be more accepted, instead of being supplanted. Not to say "railway diners" (what were they? Kelly's? The Kelly Girls...?) wouldn't exist (& fulfill the same role as McD's &c), but they'd be far less prevalent.
 
If the interstates don't materialize in the US, then the Trans-Canada Highway, with help from the provinces, might become what the US Interstate Highway System would have been. Yes, there will be areas (like the Windsor-Québec City corridor) that will be used more often, but it would be a start.
 
That's them. Thanx. I'd agree, rwys'd be in better shape. So would pollution & global warming, IMO. More demand for electric rail power might've encouraged development of solar power satellites or ocean thermal conversion by now...:cool:
The problem is, the trend in the latter half of the 20th century has been away from electrification- except for a few specific situations, (for example, underground stations with poor ventilation) diesel engines tend to be more cost-efficient, especially if fuel is cheap... Still, trains do tend to be more effective than cars at limiting emissions per rider per mile.

I don't think this necessarily gets rid of highways, though, it just shifts the burden to the states. However, a crucial element of the interstate highway system was creating a new set of standards, and upgrading older state-built highways to the new standards. Without the interstate standards, state-built highways will be more likely to have less safety features to cut costs, and you may see an overall increase in accidents.
 

Xen

Banned
What about a POD of no Cold War?

Both the USSR and USA shrink back into isolationism, though they both maintain bases in a "Austriaized Germany". The security of Europe is left to Itlay, Britain, France, Poland and Yugoslavia. Left to its own, Europe slowly recovers.

In the US Eisenhower does not run for President in 1952, rather Robert Taft gets the GOP nomination and wins 1952, but dies the following year. His Veep (for the sake of argument lets say Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.) becomes President, and the issue never comes up, and if it does it is shot down, due to part of the reason the Interstates were built was for national defense purposes, removing the Soviet threat can kill the bill.
 
Part of the justification for the Interstate system is that it included straight sections of rural highway, without interfering bridges or signs, that could function as landing strips in an emergency, hence the original name "defense highways." The idea was to close the Interstates to civilian traffic during such an emergency.
 
Part of the justification for the Interstate system is that it included straight sections of rural highway, without interfering bridges or signs, that could function as landing strips in an emergency, hence the original name "defense highways." The idea was to close the Interstates to civilian traffic during such an emergency.

Snopes says "No!".

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp said:
Richard Weingroff, information liaison specialist for the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Infrastructure and the FHA's unofficial historian, says the closest any of this came to touching base with reality was in 1944, when Congress briefly considered the possibility of including funding for emergency landing strips in the Federal Highway-Aid Act (the law that authorized designation of a "National System of Interstate Highways"). At no point was the idea kited of using highways or other roads to land planes on; the proposed landing strips would have been built alongside major highways, with the highways serving to handle ground transportation access to and from these strips. The proposal was quickly dropped, and no more was ever heard of it. (A few countries do use some of their roads as military air strips, however.)

Some references to the one-mile-in-five assertion claim it's part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. This piece of legislation committed the federal government to build what became the 42,800-mile Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, which makes it the logical item to cite concerning regulations about how the interstate highway system was to be laid out. The act did not, however, contain any "one-in-five" requirement, nor did it even suggest the use of stretches of the interstate system as emergency landing strips. The one-out-of-five rule was not part of any later legislation either.
 
I suspect just the opposite. Without easy intercity car traffic, they might die even sooner. Of course, something like Bantam might survive, providing cheap, small citycars. European imports (in particular Mini or Fiat 500) might be much more popular, while big Detroit iron might not be.

Greyhound would probably not exist; interurban or trolley would probably serve "short" routes where "heavy" rail doesn't.

And there's something most of us don't consider, since we take it so much for granted: the U.S. would be much more regional & less national. Chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, so forth, wouldn't be everywhere, since travellers would have much less demand for "sameness" (surety of quality & taste) wherever they go. Local restaurants, local customs, would be more accepted, instead of being supplanted. Not to say "railway diners" (what were they? Kelly's? The Kelly Girls...?) wouldn't exist (& fulfill the same role as McD's &c), but they'd be far less prevalent.

I think you'd still see it, but possibly taking off in the seventies instead of the sixties. There would be an even greater demand for cheap air travel between cities in TTL and so you could see the development of a budget airways type market with really cheap flights between major cities by the 70's.
 
And there's something most of us don't consider, since we take it so much for granted: the U.S. would be much more regional & less national. Chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, so forth, wouldn't be everywhere, since travellers would have much less demand for "sameness" (surety of quality & taste) wherever they go. Local restaurants, local customs, would be more accepted, instead of being supplanted. Not to say "railway diners" (what were they? Kelly's? The Kelly Girls...?) wouldn't exist (& fulfill the same role as McD's &c), but they'd be far less prevalent.

This was actually the first thing that popped into my head. I think it'd make for a much cooler US. Architecture, art, fashion, accents, food, etc. would all be much more varied depending on where you were, instead of the unified culture we have today. North-South, East-West differences would be much more magnified. This would be a pretty awesome story to write but I think it would require a much smaller threat from the Soviet Union or a much more limited WWII.

We'd also probably have a much less strong federal government. People would identify more with their cities and states than their national government and would want to keep the power, and money, at home.

Lastly, the drinking age in most states would be 18! No federal highway system = no federal highway funds to withhold if states lower their drinking age.
 
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