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7 lines
1.6 KiB
7 lines
1.6 KiB
Yeah. Thanks to President Eisenhower, his Interstate Highway system killed the last potential for the creation of the great American rail system. Check out the [http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/national.pdf detailed map of routes from Amtrak] and compare with [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep10/images/nhsjpg.jpg the national interstate highways].
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It's depressing.
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:Yeah; I think the best construction you can possibly put on the Interstate system is that it's a giant ramifying ball of mixed blessings and curses. On the one hand, it's probably so integral a part of what the United States has (have?) become that you could no more easily subtract it from the picture of the last forty years than you could air travel or urban sprawl. On the other, the Interstate highways have had consequences about which I can't be entirely impartial. The connection to rail travel's basic unmarketability is one. Another is that it is possible to travel the length and breadth of this country in nearly pure isolation from anything resembling localized culture, in substantial isolation from the better part of the landscape you're travelling through. You could drive from coast to coast eating at the same restaurant, staying in identical hotel rooms, watching the same television, listening to the same Clear Channel radio, buying gas from the same company, and drinking the same mediocre beer.
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:I'm overstating the case some (I doubt by much, but some), and it's not all bad, but it's not all good either. Even if it does represent some of the most substantial constructive accomplishments of any human civilization to date, most of them unthinkable more than a lifetime or two ago.
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