Did Interstates ruin travel in America?
Nov 6th, 2014, 07:00 PM
#101
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Between 1957 and 1966 when I was a kid we made 10 round trips from Texas (Houston or Dallas) to Los Angeles and back. What I remember is making it to El Paso in one day and spending a night in a nice motel where my Dad could work for two days. My brother and I got to swim in the pool. Then a very miserable 1000 long mile drive without an overnight stop to make it all the way to Los Angeles where we would visit our Grandparents for 2 weeks and then return. Maybe stopping two nights on the road home. We NEVER stopped anywhere of interest. We always ate at Dennys....breakfast, lunch and dinner. Never did we stop at the Grand Canyon or Painted Desert as much as my brother and I begged! I do remember stopping at the side of the road so we could play in a small sand dune for two minutes. I remember a lot of driving at night so we didn't even see the scenery.
Since 1973 DH and I have taken a road trip vacation or 2 or 4 a year. We always stop at points of interest along the way. Sometimes we make driving a road the destination. We've driven to every state except Hawaii but once we flew to Hawaii we drove on every main road on the two islands we visited. I-70 in Utah and Colorado has to be the most beautiful interstate and I love to stop at the scenic overlooks over and over again. We even plan to eat at these overlooks if we can...having an RV makes that very easy.
It's not the roads.....it's how you decided to drive them.
Utahtea
Since 1973 DH and I have taken a road trip vacation or 2 or 4 a year. We always stop at points of interest along the way. Sometimes we make driving a road the destination. We've driven to every state except Hawaii but once we flew to Hawaii we drove on every main road on the two islands we visited. I-70 in Utah and Colorado has to be the most beautiful interstate and I love to stop at the scenic overlooks over and over again. We even plan to eat at these overlooks if we can...having an RV makes that very easy.
It's not the roads.....it's how you decided to drive them.
Utahtea
Nov 26th, 2014, 06:48 PM
#105
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"Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it" - Greg Anderson
...never cleaned a toilet.
Or in other words, whether it's about the journey or the destination may be a subject only worth discussing in contexts that are largely pleasurable. Some things really are best just gotten done, and forget about smelling the, uh, chloride bleach in the toilet cleaner.
The roads that the Interstate complemented, were themselves roads that had to be built. I can still remember my dad driving us around on plenty of gravel roads; just to get pavement was an improvement for the most part. That said, while I recognize paved roads as improved travel, paved roads don't look to my eye as pretty as the gravel kind. But that doesn't mean I want those dirt/gravel roads back, at least not in the quantity they once were.
Tgourmet, I think you are putting down to malice/racism, what was likely mere oversight/incompetence. Occam's Razor and all that. Those pretty little stone bridges were likely designed for just that reason, to be pretty. I doubt the designers had deliberate obstruction to minorities and the poor in mind, they likely just forgot the practicalities, period. Trucks, not just buses, couldn't properly navigate those bridges, and trucks are driven by and for people of all races. So I doubt segregation was a goal of interstate or parkway infrastructure, because it's hard enough to get infrastructure designed and built properly even without social engineering goals benign or malicious. It's not easy to design a good bridge for a reasonable cost, period. Consider the case of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw
...never cleaned a toilet.
Or in other words, whether it's about the journey or the destination may be a subject only worth discussing in contexts that are largely pleasurable. Some things really are best just gotten done, and forget about smelling the, uh, chloride bleach in the toilet cleaner.
The roads that the Interstate complemented, were themselves roads that had to be built. I can still remember my dad driving us around on plenty of gravel roads; just to get pavement was an improvement for the most part. That said, while I recognize paved roads as improved travel, paved roads don't look to my eye as pretty as the gravel kind. But that doesn't mean I want those dirt/gravel roads back, at least not in the quantity they once were.
Tgourmet, I think you are putting down to malice/racism, what was likely mere oversight/incompetence. Occam's Razor and all that. Those pretty little stone bridges were likely designed for just that reason, to be pretty. I doubt the designers had deliberate obstruction to minorities and the poor in mind, they likely just forgot the practicalities, period. Trucks, not just buses, couldn't properly navigate those bridges, and trucks are driven by and for people of all races. So I doubt segregation was a goal of interstate or parkway infrastructure, because it's hard enough to get infrastructure designed and built properly even without social engineering goals benign or malicious. It's not easy to design a good bridge for a reasonable cost, period. Consider the case of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw
Nov 30th, 2014, 04:15 AM
#107
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I'm late to this thread but I want to say I'd love to go on a road trip with rajasnumberonefan!
A big deal vacation for us in the early 60s was driving from southern NH to Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod for a cheap tenting vacation. When I asked about motels, my father replied they were only for rich people.
I longest road trip dh, ds and I went on was the summer there wasn't any work so "we might as well go camping". One month to explore roads south, home for a week, then another month to explore PEI and Nova Scotia. We stopped where it looked interesting and I always wanted to know what was over the next hill. Don't even remember any fast food places in Canada (dh avoids cities) but do remember the wonderful rest areas and dh's fascination for the numerous short ferry rides.
We do not have a gps in the car but we do have a DeLorme atlas and gazetteer for the three northern New England states. Year after year I wonder about the intelligence of people on the interstate during congested traffic tourist times (i.e. fall foliage weekends). There are other roads without any traffic and far more interesting.
A big deal vacation for us in the early 60s was driving from southern NH to Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod for a cheap tenting vacation. When I asked about motels, my father replied they were only for rich people.
I longest road trip dh, ds and I went on was the summer there wasn't any work so "we might as well go camping". One month to explore roads south, home for a week, then another month to explore PEI and Nova Scotia. We stopped where it looked interesting and I always wanted to know what was over the next hill. Don't even remember any fast food places in Canada (dh avoids cities) but do remember the wonderful rest areas and dh's fascination for the numerous short ferry rides.
We do not have a gps in the car but we do have a DeLorme atlas and gazetteer for the three northern New England states. Year after year I wonder about the intelligence of people on the interstate during congested traffic tourist times (i.e. fall foliage weekends). There are other roads without any traffic and far more interesting.
Dec 6th, 2014, 10:45 PM
#109
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First off, I enjoyed reading everyone's roadtrip travel accounts, pre- and post-interstate.
Interstates destroyed neighborhoods--no question that happened. Like the Rondo in St. Paul. Of course these neighborhoods tended to be poor and black. And they were often poorer because of redlining, which meant that these neighborhoods were even cheaper to buy out with eminent domain.
As for traveling under Jim Crow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neg...ist_Green_Book
Sue_xx_yy, I think you are underestimating Robert Moses's segregation efforts. Look at Caro's biography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchin...y#cite_note-13
This issue still comes up in various ways, because many wealthy neighborhoods do not want public transportation in order to preserve their exclusivity.
I have to admit that the first thing that came to mind when reading this thread title was "Grapes of Wrath". There's a pre-interstate cross-country road trip that could have been improved (although I don't think the problem was really a lack of interstates).
I have an impression that poorer people, of whatever color, who took these pre-interstate trips, for whatever reason, would often look for their church communities to find a place to stay (in someone's home, for example) on the way. Or people you knew would tell you to look up their relatives. I think there was a much greater reliance on informal hospitality. (And "poorer" might not be quite the right word, as even middle-class people would do this.)
I would be interested in a similar thread on people's long-ago European travel experiences. My mother's hotel room in Copenhagen cost the equivalent of USD $1.50/night in 1957.
Interstates destroyed neighborhoods--no question that happened. Like the Rondo in St. Paul. Of course these neighborhoods tended to be poor and black. And they were often poorer because of redlining, which meant that these neighborhoods were even cheaper to buy out with eminent domain.
As for traveling under Jim Crow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neg...ist_Green_Book
Sue_xx_yy, I think you are underestimating Robert Moses's segregation efforts. Look at Caro's biography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchin...y#cite_note-13
This issue still comes up in various ways, because many wealthy neighborhoods do not want public transportation in order to preserve their exclusivity.
I have to admit that the first thing that came to mind when reading this thread title was "Grapes of Wrath". There's a pre-interstate cross-country road trip that could have been improved (although I don't think the problem was really a lack of interstates).
I have an impression that poorer people, of whatever color, who took these pre-interstate trips, for whatever reason, would often look for their church communities to find a place to stay (in someone's home, for example) on the way. Or people you knew would tell you to look up their relatives. I think there was a much greater reliance on informal hospitality. (And "poorer" might not be quite the right word, as even middle-class people would do this.)
I would be interested in a similar thread on people's long-ago European travel experiences. My mother's hotel room in Copenhagen cost the equivalent of USD $1.50/night in 1957.
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