Growing up in Niagara Falls, I remember one of the first, the New York Thruway. It was a true interstate rather than the intrastates of today. It eased long distance travel as the entire system was intended. The Thruway ran east of Erie, Buffalo, and my Niagara Falls, south of Rochester, north of Syracuse, etc. If one’s destination was those cities, one left the Interstate on a local road, perhaps returning on another.
But this post-war era also saw the burgeoning of cars, travel, and especially suburbs. New sections of the Interstate system started joining cities directly, traversing urban cores, and started being used for local “rush-hour” traffic – and the situation is reversed. If one wants to truly travel interstate one must leave the primary system and use local bypasses. In fact, these ill-advised direct routes were sometimes violently protested as the resulting “urban renewal” displaced millions of inner city families.
It’s a good guess that today the greatest expenses of building and maintaining the Interstate system are to facilitate local travel: bypasses, entrances and exits, over-and under-passes, anywhere from 4-8 lanes, complex signage and lighting, etc. All this at primarily federal expense to mitigate local or state problems.
Yes, that’s true of Dayton, too. I remember James McGee, even before he became mayor in 1970, pushing for I-75 to run through Dayton rather than use the New York Thruway model. The idea was to replace Route 25 as closely as possible. Back then, Route 25 travelers might stop at a downtown hotel and eat at a downtown restaurant. But all too soon travelers held their breath navigating the city via I-75, bedded down at a newfangled motor hotel, and ate at one of the newly built suburban chain restaurants.
The point: We did it wrong but it’s here to stay. The rise of suburbs and the number of cars will continue to necessitate the complex system we have. But it is neither the function nor the responsibility of the federal government to get all these people safely to work and back home. Or to get them to downtown sports complexes, venues, or city and county offices. The federal government can assume responsibility for the bypasses made necessary by past mistakes, but cities, counties, and states should accept more of the responsibility to provide safe local transportation as a factor and consequence of their economic success.
Yes, mea culpa – my wife’s and my I-75 travel is local, between a southern and a northern suburb. But I still think more of the expenses should fall on those of us who use the system so, in Dayton and across the country.
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