President Dwight D. Eisenhower And The Interstate Highway System

While many would point to the space shuttle or the television as advancements of the 2-th century that defined society today, one that is often overlooked is the interstate highway system that was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower through the Interstate Highway Act. This highway system stretched 41,000 miles throughout the country to eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel” (History.com). What is significant about the interstate highway system is the vast scope that it affects. From the economy of the country to the leisure of the citizens, this system contributes to the success of the country significantly. The first major

People who used the United States highways at the time struggled with detours and traffic jams. The short-sighted construction of the roads failed to take these issues into account, and the highways consequently became very inconvenient and time-consuming (Weingroff). Not only would traffic jams and detours cause unnecessary consumption of fuel, but it also squanders productive time. Although productivity is difficult to measure, the Federal Highway Administration estimates around a billion dollars worth of productivity lost because of the poorly constructed highways. Individually, these losses may seem minimal. Perhaps in a hypothetical scenario, a factory worker were to spend 10 minutes longer on the road due to the traffic congestion; 10 minutes worth of fuel was wasted. If millions of these factory workers were to go to work under these conditions, the 10 million minutes of production times and fuels would be used up unnecessarily nationwide each day. To Eisenhower, these were issues that were deceivingly severe in magnitude. Some might oppose Eisenhower’s traffic argument by citing that traffic existed in every major city and that it was inevitable. This argument is certainly true, but the difference lies in the magnitude of the traffic. If Eisenhower had not signed the Interstate Highway Act, traffics would be much severe and longer duration of time

For a first world country, leisurely activities are crucial in maintaining the structure of society (Schult). Especially when the majority of the working population engage in repetitive jobs, the workers will likely show enmity for their jobs and their productivity will likely plummet if the workers weren’t allowed or able to obtain acceptable levels of leisure time. In many cases, people travel to other part of the country to rest and replenish their mental activity to prepare for the several months of work ahead of them. In order to accomplish that, people had two choices: travel by car using the highway or by train. Attempting a family vacation with the train as the main mode of transportation would not be ideal because that would require the train tracks to run through places close to the destination, which is not always guaranteed, and the family would have to share their leisure in the company of the dozens of other passengers in the train. Yet, travelling by car before the Interstate Highway Act had its own