ABSTRACT
The interstate highway system is the transportation backbone of America, a 46,000-mile ribbon of superhighways that traverses the continental United States connecting every major city from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Florida, and Canada to Mexico.1 It is the critical infrastructure supporting America’s dominant automobile culture and has helped transform how and where Americans drive, live, shop, and conduct their business. The highway system, with its 54,663 bridges and 104 tunnels, is the envy of the engineering and transportation world. Indeed, in 1994 the American Society of Civil Engineers proclaimed it one of the “Seven Wonders of the United States.”2
Others, however, have been less enthusiastic. Interstate rest stops up and down the East Coast do a brisk business selling “I Hate I-95” T-shirts; travelers are almost guaranteed to hit aggravating traffic congestion as Interstate 95, the world’s busiest highway, snakes through the heavily populated areas of the East Coast megalopolis, from Boston through Washington, D.C. During any given morning or evening rush hour, interstate traffic in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, or other major urban corridors slows to a crawl, forming the world’s longest parking lots.
