[Alberta's Child]

I don't think you're right about that.

The first modern U.S. highway system came into existence around World War I. These are the roads you now see designated as the old Federal routes US-1, US-66, US-22, etc.

Interestingly, part of the political pressure for a national highway system in the early years of the 20th century was a general feeling in this country that the railroad industry had simply become too powerful. Most of the companies in the original Dow Jones Industrial Index were railroads, and the decades after the establishment of the railroad industry in the U.S. saw frequent widespread economic chaos due to railroad strikes and other service disruptions.

[dsc]

“I don’t think you’re right about that. The first modern U.S. highway system came into existence around World War I. These are the roads you now see designated as the old Federal routes US-1, US-66, US-22, etc.”

I don’t know if it’s accurate to speak of a two-lane road as “modern.”

The interstates were designed to allow the military to load up and move long distances at high speeds without interruption or incident. Load tanks and everything else on trucks that can do 90 mph without chewing up the roads.

Accommodation of aircraft is not as important as it once was, but it was still a design spec.

[hinckley buzzard]

The National Road begun by Thomas Jefferson became US Rte 40. During WW I it carried convoys of hundreds of trucks a day carrying military supplies. It also had the longest stretch of continuous brick paved highway in the country at that time. Stretches of it still remain in Ohio.