Читать книгу RVs & Campers For Dummies - Christopher Hodapp - Страница 29

“Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past… . I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beautiful!”

—Judge Doom, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

This was Judge Doom, the bad guy ’toon of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with his evil plot to kill the Los Angeles Red Car streetcar line in favor of highways and automobiles. This was the vision of the men who built the Interstate Highway System, the massive, federally funded project started in 1956, and finally declared complete in 1992. It was a remarkable achievement, and it was vitally needed. But there’s no question it changed the nation in ways we’re still trying to understand.

The most important thing to understand about all the old U.S. highway systems, including Route 66, is that these were essentially stretches of highway linking towns in a chain, going through the towns. In fact, the highway usually ran right down Main Street.

By contrast, the newfangled engineering idea with the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was “controlled access,” with no intersections, no way on or off the road apart from strategically placed exit ramps miles apart. Depending on where you go, the interstate was called a freeway, an expressway, or a throughway.

Eisenhower’s planners designed a system that bypassed all major cities, to keep traffic moving. But he eventually caved on this under pressure, and we ended up with something nonsensical: a highway that bypassed the little towns, yet plowed right through the heart of all the major cities with an asphalt assault and, ironically, made traffic in cities even more congested from the start. In rural areas, that word, bypassed was the death knell for little towns when the interstate passed them by for the sake of efficiency.

Battles went on for years, with “freeway revolts” fighting the system. One of the most famous was in Tucumcari, New Mexico, a town Route 66 had put on the map. We drove across I-40 in the late ’70s, when the eternally unfinished interstate abruptly ended and detoured you off through the town on the old Route 66. But in July 1981, the new bypass was finally dedicated. When the interstate routes were completed, motels and cafes in the town started closing soon after, just as they had in so many other towns.

This is the reason for the nostalgia around Route 66, with its fun vibe of America in its prime. As little towns folded their tents, decaying from the economic blow, the interstate became a symbol of progress rolling over the small, mom-and-pop businesses, and the relentless sameness of the chain hotels and restaurants.