Stuff You Should Know - How the US Interstate System Works

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Wait! This is actually a good episode! It turns out that America’s 48,000 miles of superhighways – possibly the largest civil works project in the history of humanity – may have also ruined what made America a cool place. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, stuff you should know listeners, if you wanna come see us live, you've only got a couple of more cities this year that still have tickets, and that is Orlando and New Orleans. Yep, we'll be in Orlando on October 9th at the Plaza Live,

and we'll be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night, October 10th. And friends, like Chuck said, you better go get your tickets. Go to sysklive.com for info and ticket links and everything you need to come see us. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. And welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark,

there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there and the three of us are going riding on the freeway of love in a pink Cadillac. There's no looking back, Jack. Who is that, Aretha? Yes. Good song for later stuff.

For sure. That and then New Year Awaiting with George Michael, I mean, come on. Yeah, I mean, it didn't hold up to me for the, against like the stuff from the 60s and 70s, but. You're like, it's no Zeppelin. No, I'm just talking about Aretha's earlier work. I know.

I know what you mean. I would have liked to have seen her sing with Zeppelin. That would have been neat. Yeah, well, what if it's song she would have sung? I don't know. How about? Whole lot of love. Whole lot of love.

We'll go with that one. All right, we need to get to reanimating Aretha and John Bonham. Mm-hmm. All right, Chuck, enough of this. It's high time that we got to talking about the United States Highway Interstate system. Yeah, I love this stuff.

I do too. I was like, what is it about this that I do love? Cause I've been meaning to do this one for a really long time. And I guess it's the fact that it's a huge mass of public works. Yeah, that's where it gets me. Civil engineering. We kind of have a thing for civil engineering, don't we?

I think so, man, like subways and bridges and like all that stuff seems to delight both of us. But then also the other thing I like about it that really kind of came to the fore through this research is the enormous impacts, both like good and bad, that this huge massive sweeping public work project had on America and still has today, like just completely restructured America inside and out.

Yeah, and this also makes me wanna do a commission, a piece on the suburbs. Yes, dude, I think that's a great idea. That's a big one to unpack. And commission a piece, I'm glad you said that because this is based on an article written by the great Ed Grabbinowski. The Grabster.

That's right. So we should probably say what we're talking about. If you've never been to the United States or if you've never been out of your house and you live in the United States, the America has a really extensive system of roadways, like really, really fast, really well-designed interstates. That's what they're called.

They're highways, they're expressways, speedways, whatever you wanna call them. But they connect every major city in the United States to every other major city in the United States. You can get anywhere from anywhere. And there's something like 48,000 plus miles of interstate, just interstate, not highways, not byways, not roads. I think that comes to something like 150,000 miles.

But there's like 48,000 miles of just this incredibly well-engineered, well-constructed, super fast road artery system. Cardiovascular system for cars in the United States. Yeah, it's kind of what it looks like sometimes on a map. For sure. It's like a central nervous system for the US. So shall we go back in time a bit though?

I think we should, but we had to lay down what we were talking about first in complete contrariness to the standard SYSK fashion. That's right. Okay, so let's go back in time, Chuck. So we're going back to the beginning of the 20th century here and at the time, roads in the United States, and we're talking about roads

outside of the major, major urban centers. They had a little bit better roads, but the rural roads were not good by any standard. They were dirt roads, so when it rained, and we're not even talking gravel roads, we mean literally dirt roads. Yeah. Which seems like a catch-all term,

but a gravel road is much, much better than a dirt road. For sure. Because I've lived on both. Oh, fancy, man, you lived on a gravel road? Yeah, growing up, I had a gravel road until I was like 10 or 11, they paved it. When did you live on a dirt road? Before they put gravel down.

Oh, okay. So you lived on the same road, but it was a dirt road once and then again. So I think when they put the gravel down, that's called an improved road. Yeah, I went from dirt to gravel improved to paved, which I've said this on one episode, but I remember very distinctly and they paved it

after my whole life going up that gravel road. It felt like we were driving on pudding. Oh, yeah. It was so smooth and weird, and we felt so modern. So you grew up on a road back in 1906, chewing tobacco and working in the mines? Is that where you grew up? No, it was the 70s, but it was just a dead-end road.

It wasn't a big neighborhood, which I've talked about before. I'll bet that was a pretty big difference in feeling when you had it paved. It was really weird, but rural roads at the early 20th century were dirt, and when it rained, it was terrible mud, and then when that dried up, there were terrible ruts.

And it was not the biggest deal at the time because cars were still pretty new and were very much for the rich, but the horse and buggy and the horse-drawn carriage did not enjoy these roads either. Sure, no. And then another mode of transportation, the bicycle, actually created something

called the Better Roads Movement. Good Roads. Good Roads Movement. I like mine better. Yeah, you got good, but wouldn't you rather have better? Sure, that was probably in the meeting. Let's think old-timey folks. So the Good Roads Movement was created

by bicycle enthusiasts who said these dirt track muddy roads aren't gonna work for bikes. And when people started using automobiles, especially like you said, wealthy people at first, they were like, these bike people are onto something. I'm a car guy, but the same applies. So let's kind of adopt this Good Roads Movement. And we're gonna start agitating for better roads.

And those better roads are, like you said, just laying down a layer of gravel was a vast improvement over what they had before. Yeah, and there was also legislation in 1893 for what's called rural free delivery, RFD mail, because at the time, if you lived in the country, you went and picked up your mail, they didn't bring it to you.

This seems appropriate. And so in 1893, they finally passed legislation that said, we need to get mail to people. And that was a big part of improving the roads as well. Right, they're never gonna find out about Circuit City's newest sale if we don't get them their mail out in the rural sticks. That's right.

So there are people agitating for road improvement, but at the time, it was kind of taken on by the wealthy people who own cars, industrialists, philanthropist, benefactors. This is all like within the first 20 years of the 20th century, I think, where clubs were formed, where they said we're going to take over responsibility

for improving roads and just basically getting things up to snuff so that, we can drive our cars on these things. And I think they did it fairly locally at first, but by 1913, the Lincoln Highway was built. And that was the first transcontinental highway that was basically built for cars. Yeah, it went from Times Square in New York

to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. And it didn't just carve it out of barren earth. It used a lot of the roads that were already there, improved on those, connected stuff together. There was a dude named Carl G. Fisher. Yeah, did you look into this guy? Yeah, he was an entrepreneur from Indiana, real estate mogul, and a really big time

auto slash auto racing enthusiast who had a way of marketing and like drumming up support for stuff like this. Yeah, he was big time into racing cars, but he had like such severe astigmatism. He had like Coke bottle glasses, but he still raced cars. And he actually set the record,

the land speed automobile record. He made it around a two mile, he made it around a track, two miles on a track in two minutes, broke the record. That's not a joke. That's adorable. It is, it's pretty cute, isn't it? Yeah, he had to calm down.

He took five days for his nerves to stabilize after that top speed. But he was the champion of this highway, the Lincoln Highway. It became famous for, kind of like Route 66, we did an episode on that. Lincoln Highway was notable for its famous roadside giants and attractions and things just like Route 66 was.

Yeah, so then, but still there was this idea that private groups of auto enthusiasts were kind of the ones who were responsible for taking care of roads or designating highways, that kind of thing. And this group called the American Association of State Highway Officials. Now it's the American Association of State Highway

and Transportation Officials. They sound like this very legal, important group and they are, but they're not an actual like government group. They're a non-government organization that basically started, and I think 1914, saying we're in charge of saying what the best practices are for roads, what roads should be made into highways.

And they managed to basically insinuate themselves in between the government and the highway system and said, hey, these roads should be highways. Why don't you go fund and improve these roads right here? And the government said, sure, we'll do that. And that's kind of how we started to get our first highway system. Yeah, so they were 1914 and two years later,

the Federal Aid Road Act came along to provide funding. And I guess future libertarians started to weep because the public couldn't take care of their own roads anymore, or maybe they were sad because it came clear that the public taking care of its own roads was not a workable solution for the future. So they had to rely on the federal government to come in. And they did, and this group, as you said now, the AASHTO,

not only did they designate highways and connect cities, but they said, you should get funds. This road should be improved. We need to get a numbering system. We need to get signage that makes sense. And we'll get to the numbering system, but the basics of it are that highways are numbered in reverse order from interstates,

because what you don't want is those numbers to be too close to one another. Right, which actually led to one of the quirks of the U.S. interstate system is that there's actually no I-50 in the United States because there's a U.S. highway 50, and they would be in the exact same spot, basically. That's right. And U.S. highway 50, I looked into,

it's called the Loneliest Road in America, because it goes through some of the most desolate stretches in the entire country. Doesn't look like a fun trip to me. Where does it go through? The flyover states, basically. The drive-through states? Kind of, yeah.

But it's like, it goes, I can't remember exactly where it goes through, from what I was reading, it's like, there's huge long stretches between gas stations and towns and stuff like that, far more than the average, even back road highway. Interesting, yeah. I'm wondering, I'm just trying to think if I've been on it,

I'll have to look at the map. I looked, I wondered if Umi and I had been on it between Scottsdale and Las Vegas, because I was like, man, we were definitely on some desolate stretches. No, that was I think like 93 or something like that, or 60, maybe 60, it wasn't 50 though. Yeah, and when I did my big out West trip,

so I was definitely on some roads where I thought, if I have car trouble, I'm, you know, the buzzards will be circling. Doomed. Yeah, yeah. So the highway system's going, not the interstate system yet. Yeah, that's a big, big thing to remember.

We're talking about two different things here. Yeah, big diff, because these roads were still many, most of them two lane roads, and they still had some, you know, dangerous curves, and they had stoplights, and they went through little towns and big towns, and they were just connected together at least. That's right.

So around this time though, as this highway system is coming along and improving, they were just constantly adding to it and designating new roads that were, you know, traditional horse and buggy paths to be improved into U.S. highways. The automobile is becoming more and more important. It's going from, you know, a luxury of the very rich

to something that just about every American was starting to depend on, especially people who didn't live in the center of a city. Right. So as the car gets more important, the highways start to get more and more important, and people started to say, look, I think we might be able to do better

than what we have now. And that actually was the fire that ignited the interstate system as we understand it today. That sounds like a great time to stop. As I was saying at Chuck, I was like, God, this is such a great segue into a message break. Yeah, we'll take a little break and come back

and talk about FDR right after this. ["Pay Dude," by David Lasher and Christine Taylor plays in the background." On the podcast, Pay Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

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All right. All right. So, highways are being built. They're being connected. But in 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, here's a plan to the Bureau of Public Roads. It's 1937. There's six super highways, and everyone went, what?

Yeah, that sounds amazing. And he's like, these are going to connect our nation, and they had all these reports done. And that sort of formed the basis of what would become our highway system. But we couldn't afford to do this at the time. World War II came along, and everything just sort of was put on hold.

Right. Understandably so. But then afterward, America was like, man, we've got a lot of money. And from what I've read, there was a concern that this post-war boom that had been generated by World War II, because one of the big knock-on effects of World War II, it pulled us right out of the Great Depression

and put us into a pretty great boom period. I think they were scared to death that we were going to go back to a recession or lose this boom. And so some people say that one of the main reasons, one of the great unstated reasons for why the federal government was suddenly so happy over the idea of spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to create this interstate system was

to put significant numbers of people to work and just flood the economy throughout the entire country with government money to just keep that post-war boom going. And it worked like an absolute charm. It still works. I mean, that's still a stimulus package that's reliable. And a lot of times now, it's improving stuff, obviously. But that's what a lot of presidents turn to.

Like, let's get people working on these roads that are falling apart. Yeah, look at these slackers. Somebody give them some asphalt. So Eisenhower is obviously most associated with the interstate system, because it was when he was in office and he pushed for the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which really kind of made everything legit.

For many reasons, this was like a very necessary thing, not least of which was for the military. We talked about, since World War I, we needed bigger roads. Like, we didn't have railroad capacity to take all the armaments and all the things we needed and supplies, and then we didn't have the highways that could do it either.

So in 1921, this guy named Thomas McDonald, he was the head of the Bureau of Public Roads. He and his staff really drew up this map, this proposed system of 78,000 miles, handed it over to General John Pershing, who presented it to Congress, and said, we need these for, this is critical for the military. It became known as the Pershing map,

even though he just handed it over to Congress. It should be the Thomas McDonald map. Sure, but nobody knew who he was, and they would have been like, get out of here, McDonald. You know, buddy. Probably. General Pershing, they were like, yes, sir, and clicked their heels together and started building things.

That's right. But that was back in the 20s, I think, that the Pershing map was handed over, right? 1922. But it was apparently such a good map, the Pershing slash McDonald map. That's what we're going to read Chris in it, OK? Yeah, and it was pretty, I mean,

they drew it up in a way that made sense, but it wasn't like, here's your exact blueprint. It's just like, we've connected all the places we think we should connect. But it was basically the general blueprint that was used for the interstate system. So it was a pretty, pretty well done map. Yes, it wasn't research, but they weren't, you know,

30 years later, they didn't go, this McDonald guy was way off. They're basically like, this works really well. That's right. And Eisenhower himself had traveled the Lincoln Highway during World War I in a military convoy, and he was like, this kind of stinks. Yeah.

And all the military brass in Europe saw the autobahn, and they saw the highways in Italy, and they were like, we need some of this stuff. Plus also, not just the military, but related to the military, this was done during the Cold War. You know, this is 1956, that the legislation was signed into law to create the interstate. And this was, you know, a pretty uneasy time.

So there was a real concern that with the existing original US highway system, if atomic bombs started getting dropped out of the United States, we'd have a really hard time moving people from place to place, from bomb cities to unaffected cities. And this interstate was a big solution to that too. Yeah, and not to oversell the military importance, but it was literally called, at first,

the national system of interstate and defense highways. Right. Defense highways. Yeah. Interesting. At least it's not the offense highways, you know what I mean? Sure. They're real aggressive.

They poke you in the chest while they're talking to you. Defensive driving. So there was another reason, there's a whole list of reasons. A lot of people say, oh, it was all military. That was a large part of it, but that certainly was not the only reason that the interstates were built in the United States. Another one was that people were starting

to move into the cities more and more. And they had been for decades already. People were leaving their farms for factories. But this was putting an enormous strain on the cities themselves, this huge influx of people that the infrastructure couldn't really support. So they said, well, wait a minute. If we build these interstates, we'll

be able to more easily connect these rural areas with the cities. And then I've got this genius idea. The people can continue to live in the rural areas, but go to and from work each day in the city. What do you think about that? And everyone said, that's probably the most flawless idea anyone's ever had in the history of the world.

Right. And then cue upcoming podcast on the suburbs and exerbs. Nice. I think we just did a choose your own adventure wedge in there, Chuck. That's pretty sweet. Another couple of reasons, leisure travel, people getting in their car with the family

and going on a vacation, driving across country to see these roadside attractions and stay in hotels and swim and swimming pools. There's all very new stuff in America. Sure. Safety, interstates, no matter which way you slice it, are a lot safer, even though you're going faster, a lot safer than these highways that they had up there.

Yeah, which is really funny to think of. I think of highways, like crash on a highway, it's just like limbs everywhere and just blood all over the place. But the thing is, yes, you can get into big serious trouble going very fast on a highway or on an interstate. But on a highway, you don't have things like this designated set distance between the incoming

and oncoming traffic. You don't have gentle slopes to the shoulders so that if you do fall off the side of the road, you're not necessarily going to barrel roll. You might just keep driving straight. There's all these designs that are created to make interstate safer than highways. And part of it is, you can't get in a head-on collision

with another car. It's basically impossible on a United States interstate. Well, and yeah, unless somebody gets on going the wrong way, which happens. It does happen, very infrequently. But under normal conditions, yeah. You're not going to veer out of your lane. You'll veer into the median and go, what the heck happened?

I'm driving on grass. Right, exactly. There's two other things that make interstates distinct from highways that improve their safety tremendously. One is that there's controlled entrance and exits. So that means that when you get onto a highway or an interstate, man, I'm going to do that all episode apparently, you're traveling in the same direction as traffic already.

Ideally at speed. Right. I remember very distinctly in Driver's Ed, the first time I merged onto the highway and how nerve-wracking that is. And the dude telling me to punch it. And I'm like, but the speed limit. And he was correct. He said, we're going to die.

He was correct in saying like, no, man, it doesn't matter. Like you got to go as fast as they're going or it's dangerous. That's right. But that's a huge difference then, say like a highway where somebody turns right into traffic and all the people behind them have to slow while they speed up to the flow of traffic. So that's a huge thing.

And then also the reason why people don't turn right onto the highway is because any criss-cross with the interstate, I should say, did it again. Any criss-cross with it goes over. Like it's a bridge. You have an overpass. That's how you get across the highway. There's no stoplights. There's no, you know, somebody just driving,

you know, perpendicular with the flow of traffic. You go over that with an interstate. I love that at the beginning of this, he said. This is a very important distinction. You should have said, which I will fail to make over and over. Which I will blur in your mind forever. And then the other, one of the other big things, you know, and Ed said they don't have stoplights.

There are traffic lights now in a lot of cities to more safely get you onto the highway. But they still give you enough ramp time to get up to speed. Right. That's for to ease congestion. Yeah, just to, so there's not a hundred cars trying to pile on at once.

It's one car every whatever, three or four seconds. I think we talked about that in our traffic episode. And I'm pretty sure like that really, really helps ease congestion. Traffic bubble. It was shown to, yeah. Remember that? Yep.

You coined that. I did, didn't I? Mm-hmm. Didn't I? I did. Oh, brake bubble. One of the bubbles. I think it was the brake bubble.

I think so. I certainly talked about it a lot. I remember that. And then one of the other big reasons, kind of to kind of jump back here while we needed these highways. I'm sorry. Jump back.

Here we go again, interstates. Right. Well, simple economics. If you could get these urban centers connected to rural towns and these efficient roads where you could ship goods faster and further than you ever have and extend the range of the workforce

more than you ever have, it's just, it cannot be overstated what that did for the American economy. Yeah, because I mean, connecting those rural areas and eventually suburban areas, it's like you have a way bigger workforce pool if you're a company located downtown, then you did with these highways

because the commute would have just been unsustainable, unbearable. I mean, it's already bad enough on the interstates, but with just original US highways, it just wouldn't, you couldn't do it. Yeah. Here's to me, one of the more interesting parts of this is that originally the US interstate system

and Eisenhower wanted them to all be toll roads because he's like, what's better than having something that people just, it pays for itself. But they did all these studies and it turns out, and I think this is still pretty much true, toll roads aren't a super great idea and there have to be very specific conditions

wherein a toll road will actually pay for itself or even bring in a profit. Right, like it has to be in a very heavily trafficked area. And then there has to be basically no other alternative but that road to get from point A to point B. Yeah, otherwise people are just gonna say, I'm gonna save my nickel or whatever it was back then. That's why I remember 400, Georgia 400.

Sure. It was really successful as a toll road because it was so successful that it paid for the road. It paid for itself within 20 years and they ripped the toll booths out because Republicans were in charge of the time and they said, no more tolls. Do you remember?

Yeah, I think they were up longer than they said they were gonna be up though. And people started complaining like, hey, I thought the plan was, these are going down. Yeah, and Sonny Perdue I think was the guy who was like, all right, we're getting rid of them. Or maybe it was deal, I can't remember. But the reason 400 was so successful as a toll road

is because there really weren't very many other ways to get from the Buckhead area of Atlanta up to the northern, northeastern suburbs except for 400. Yeah, that was, I mean, I don't have to pay $2 to go see my brother now. And I had to do that for many years except for the $2 he charges me when I show up at his front door.

To play as Adam's family pinball? He's like, give me $2. It has to be a $2 bill too. Scott will not accept anything else. Yeah, that's so Scott. So the toll roads don't pay for themselves. One reason why Chuck, they don't typically pay for themselves

is because especially if you're talking about interstates, there's really long stretches of interstate that are not heavily trafficked. And you would have to pay for that with the toll. Well, if somebody's coming through once a day and paying a dollar, that's not going to pay for the upkeep. So much so that they actually, there was a study that was done, I think ahead of time,

that when they were planning the interstates and they found that a lot of these, even like fairly successful toll roads or toll interstates, probably would just barely pay for the salaries of the toll booth workers. So like that's a wash of all washes. So they said, okay, no toll roads.

How about instead we'll start taxing gasoline? Yeah, not just gasoline, but let's propose a bill that taxes the rubber industry because of tires, the trucking industry. And they all said, no, I don't want to be taxed. Forget this, I don't like it. So they said, all right, we're not going to do this. Yeah, they managed to beat the bill

to create the interstate system. Yeah, they beat it down. Congress goes into recession and then the trucking industry went, what do we just do? Because this actually would have been a really great thing for trucking. And so maybe we do want that after all.

And they came back with a different bill that was pretty much the same and that one passed. Yeah, and you can understand why they were, they were a little short-sighted. They said, well, we don't want to pay extra for tires and for gasoline, we use that stuff. But then somebody crunched the numbers and said, well, everybody showed up.

But the idea that it would be done through tax dollars rather than toll roads, that was a big result of a PR push that was taken up by the AAA, General Motors, other car companies. They formed something called the National Highway Users Conference. And from this, they basically managed

to create this change of mentality in Americans' minds from, oh yeah, roads are created and supported by rich people and auto enthusiasts who it is a national duty to build and maintain roads and it is the federal government's responsibility to create interstates. And that was the result of a PR push. And part of that PR push is how we got freeways.

That was meant to really kind of point out how bad an idea toll roads were. The idea is you don't want toll roads, you want free roads, which came to be called freeways. And freeways are basically supported by gas tax. That's right. Yeah. That's great.

I thought so too. That's a good little dinner party. If you wanna be super obnoxious. Yeah. Oh, you drove over on the freeway, did you? You know where they got that. So the end shot of all this, or the upshot, I guess, there is no end shot,

is that these taxes would be placed into the Highway Trust Fund. And it's a pretty good deal for states. It's sort of like social security. The government is gonna tax, let me these taxes to pay for more highways, but provide 90% of that funding to states to do it themselves.

So the states, they're getting lots of jobs created, these big, huge public works projects. They only have to pay 10% of that, and they get a highway on top of that. Yeah, so like, mayors and governors loved this idea. Oh yeah. Because it made them look like they were just so, like all this job creation and economic growth

was happening under them. And it just got dropped in their laps by Ike and the feds. And they're only on the hook for 10% of it. Right. And the idea was every American city with at least 50,000 people, we're gonna connect them all within 13 years, which did not happen.

No, it didn't. As a matter of fact, officially, the first original plan was completed in 1992. Yeah. It was a little more than 13 years from 1956. Yeah, and Ed points out, I mean, it's technically finished, but it's never finished.

It's always being worked on and tweaked and changed here and there. Yep. So Chuck, before they got started, they had to actually do some research first. I thought this was pretty cool. They didn't just say, sure, we've been building highways. We know how to build interstates.

They really, you know, did a lot of examination on how to best build these. Because the interstate is much different from the highway. Like the highway just kind of went around the terrain and the landscape. It was bent to the will of the landscape, subservient to it. Interstates are not like that.

They are 100% American muscle, carving through Mother Earth, wherever that interstate wants to go, fast as you please. And they use something called cut and fill, which is exactly what it sounds like. They just cut out the track for the interstate and then they filled it with the stuff

that makes up the interstate roads. But to figure out what to use for the interstate roads, they actually did a tremendous amount of research first. Yeah, this is really cool. They built these test tracks near Chicago, Illinois and assigned a U.S. Army company to live there for two years and load up trucks and drive them around 19 hours every day for two years.

It sounds so awful. To see, you can't just willy-nilly build a road that's supposed to last forever with upkeep, obviously. But you gotta really, really test this stuff out over time and weight and duration to make sure that it holds up. So they had to do all this to determine how thick it needed to be and what the layers needed to be

and what the final top layer is gonna be. And not only that, they had to decide like, hey, what about signage? It's gotta be all the same. They ended up settling on green with reverse messaging. So green background, white lettering, which apparently is they did test, it's 40% more visible if you have a reverse message

than the other way around, especially at night. Rather than like, say, black letters on a white field? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Which speed limit signs are like that, but they have to distinguish like the exit signs and the highway signs, because the actual highway badge, interstate badge,

is blue and red. Right. Red, white and blue, I guess, if you count the white. Oh, I just got that. Yeah, there's white on there, right? Isn't it outlined in white? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And they tested colors.

They decided green generally means go. So we're gonna stick with green. Okay. But red, white and blue for the shields for interstates, but green shields for business loops and spurs. Oh, yeah. So when you see the business thing, yeah, it does look a little weird.

But the font that they used is actually on the green signs in particular, it's called Highway Gothic. Yeah. Which is great. Which is not very gothic. I feel like we've talked about that before. I'll bet it was in the traffic episode now that I think about it.

Yeah. Yeah. So they get all this stuff done. They figure it out. The poor army company that had to live on these tracks in Chicago for two years are all discharged. And the building begins. But it doesn't really go according to plan.

Like we said, that it was supposed to take 13 years to complete the first 40,000 miles of interstate. And they completed it in 1992. But they ran into issues pretty much from the get-go. Quick question. When you say they were discharged, you mean they just stopped that project? I'm assuming here that they were discharged

because they were forced to do that for two years. That they said, you're fine. You don't have to do anything else. So you're out of the army. Right. If you want to be. And here's some extra money. This yellow book comes into play here.

And this is when the federal officials finally officially submitted as the proposed map. And this one, much like the Pershing map, wasn't super detailed. Just had rough lines and spurs and beltways. And they said, all right, States, since you're getting a really sweet deal here, you need to figure out how best to do this

within your state. Right. So before we go on, I actually talk about what happened when they started building it. You want to take a last break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right.

Okay, Chuck, so when you're building an interstate and you're building it through pasture land or fields or, you know, even desert, whatever, sparsely inhabited regions, you don't run into too much problem. You can do it fairly cheaply. You can do it pretty quickly. There's just not a lot of stuff

you have to get done aside from building the road. But when you start to approach cities, everything changes. It gets way more expensive. It takes way longer. And the effects that it has on that area, on the city, can be really, really bad. And when they started to approach these cities and started creating the interstate system around the cities,

some towns, especially the well-to-do, wealthier people in the towns, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. This map shows this highway going through my neighborhood and that's not gonna happen. And there were what were called highway revolts where local groups, sometimes in collaboration with local politicians who felt the same way

or probably lived in the same areas, kind of rose up against the feds or even the state government and said, this is where you need to re-plan where this highway's going. And some were successful. There was one in Northwest DC that never got built. And there was one, probably the most famous of all,

was the one in Manhattan that was led by Jane Jacobs, who wrote The Life and Death of Great American Cities, who took on Robert Moses, the guy who revamped Central Park into what it is now today. And one, because they were gonna build the interstate right through Soho, the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Chinatown and Little Italy.

They were just gonna tear it up and go right through there. And Jane Jacobs managed to stave it off. Yeah, it was when the rich people said, not in my neighborhood, what do you think happened? They went to the people that couldn't fight back as much. They ran them through poor neighborhoods, use eminent domain to kick people out. And there was some grassroots resistance.

And like you said, sometimes it worked, but most times it did not. Yeah, and so this is in cities where there was resistance. There were plenty of cities who were like, this is going to breathe new life into our city. So that's fine, tear down whatever you want. Let's get the super highway of the future going through, you know, Topeka.

Sure. You know, I'm pretty sure 40 goes through Topeka. Or Manhattan, Kansas. Okay, sure, Manhattan, Kansas. They couldn't get it in New York. It's ironic that we said that because the first project that was started on the interstate system began in Kansas and Missouri.

Is that right? Yeah, I 70. Kansas and Missouri, as usual, leading the country forward in progressive new ways. That's right. And then in 1992, the reason why they consider the interstate system having been completed is because that section, I think it's I 70, not 40,

was completed in Kansas, it connected onto itself. And they said, we're done. Yeah, it's I 70. So I think we should talk a little bit about just some of the nuts and bolts of what an interstate is and what they needed to be when they were first designing these. We talked about getting away from, you know,

they need to go fast and they need to be safe. Those are like the two big requirements. So all these big curvy roads and absence of sight lines and blind bends and things that you had in the highway system was no good, super steep grades. So they wanted to streamline all that, make it more gentle, good sight lines, nice and straight. You got to have at least two traffic lanes

in each direction for the divided interstate. You know, now we have, what are we max out in Atlanta, like six or eight lanes across? It's gonna be 11. The plan is for 11 on each side eventually. So 22 lanes of traffic. It's just gonna be a monstrosity. Oh boy.

The lanes and shoulders have minimum widths, 12 feet for lanes, 10 feet for shoulders and four feet for that very scary inside shoulder, which you'd never want to be pulled over on. Right. And then as far as speed limit goes, it's sort of varied over the years. I remember after 1974,

I mean I was only three in 1974, but that is when the 55 mile per hour speed limit was mandated in most states. If you wanted to receive federal funding for highway projects, get in line with that, because you know, we had the gas crisis, oil crisis. So if you wanted your dough, drop it to 55. And it was 55 for a while.

Sammy Hagar wrote a song about it. Oh yeah. He couldn't drive it. No, despite, you know, the oil crisis, he just could not drive it. But I remember when they started relaxing that and when 60 and 70 started popping up, it was just like, it was a really big deal.

Hey, I don't know if I ever told you this or not, but Sammy Hagar's son is a fan of stuff you should know. Shut up. He is, he wrote in. Really? Maybe to the end of the world, to one of them, he basically said, hey, I heard you guys shout out my dad or make a joke about, you know, Sammy Hagar or whatever.

I just want you to know I'm a big fan and he sent a picture of him and his dad like hanging out on stage down in Cabo San Lucas. Of course, where else? Yeah, so shout out to Sammy Hagar's boy. And I bet you we made an I Can't Drive 55 joke. We certainly did. Well, Emily is very famous for liking Van Hagar

more than David Lee Roth Van Halen. Sure. I don't know why you have to choose. They're so different. I liked them both. I went and saw Van Hagar live on the OU812 tour in high school. So great.

And it was great. I love that 5150 album too. Man, I could air drum, air guitar, and air bass that entire album. Could you air keyboards? Not very well. I have fat fingers. Well, that's sort of the most boring air instrument.

Yeah. Air bass is not fun either. No, it's not, but it's easy. It's the best one to start out on. All right. Well, shout out to the Red Rocker and his son then. So Red Rocker, I haven't heard that one before. So Montrose, that was his big band.

Is that right? Yeah, before he went solo, he was in Montrose. OK, I didn't know that. I only knew him. I only picked him up around the I Can't Drive 55 era. I hope his son is listening because he's probably quite delighted with this extended offer. My name isn't Sammy Hagar's son, by the way, guys.

Sammy Hagar's son, Hagar. We should look up his name because that would be very nice. OK. Are you doing it? Yes. All right. I'll just continue on. Are we editing this little combo out right here?

No, we should have it in there. And I'll talk about Montana because Montana, as everyone knows, you don't mess with Montana. They like to make up their own rules. Aaron. They were very famous. What's his name? Oh, man, he's got two sons, Aaron and Andrew.

It's one of the two. Maybe both of them are fans. I bet you they are. OK. So Montana is very famous for saying, we just are going to drive however fast we want to drive. We may not even have a speed limit for a while. But it became known as the basic law.

And it was the speed limit in the daytime was whatever is reasonable and proper as determined by us. You hear me? No one's going to tell us, like Sammy Hagar, to drive 55. Don't tread on me. I think that's Vermont. Oh, OK. Is it?

No, that's the Tea Party. Aaron Hagar, I just found his email. So afford that to me, will you? Yeah, sure. So Montana eventually. I think right now they do have a daytime speed limit finally. But I'm not sure what it is. It's probably like 95.

Yeah, it probably is pretty high up there, actually. But the idea of just not having posted a numerical speed limit, which apparently they did for a little while, that's just astounding. Yeah, but the idea of driving 60 through rural Montana is ridiculous. Well, yeah. You need to be going 80.

Right, exactly. I'm guessing that the cops probably look the other way. Yeah, cops in Montana, they get smaller fish to fry. So I mean, because you can go so fast, that's the danger of the highways. But again, because it's closed access or controlled access, where there are very few places you can get on and off, and those places are designated and designed for you

to get on and off of the highway, that the rest of the highway is just for go, go, going, it is typically safer. I don't think we said, compared to highways, in interstate per million car miles driven. Is it a million or 100 million? I'm sorry, you're right. I believe per 100 million, I'm tap dancing here

because I cannot find it. Per 100 million car miles driven. I know that the interstate death toll rate is only 0.8. Right, I knew that part too. The highways are over, it's over going with stats wise. I got it right here, friend. 1.46 deaths for all other US roads that's per 100 million vehicle miles driven.

On interstates, it's 0.8 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven. That's a substantial, almost half the rate of fatality as every other US road. And it's because of the way it's designed. Even though you can go really, really fast, the thing is designed like bumper ball to where you can't really get a gutter ball very easily.

So here's the thing, we talked about all these, like you got to have a median this big, and all these regulations that define what an interstate is. That's not 100% the case everywhere you go. There are plenty of examples of turnpikes and throughways that were grandfathered in here and there, toll roads that were grandfathered in, states that don't have the medians that they need

or do have some steep grades and curves just because of the terrain and stuff, or speed limit differences. And they relaxed some of that here and there. So that stuff was more of a general requirement, not like the hard and fast rule, and the fist will come down, and you will not be an interstate unless you have a median, that kind of thing.

Right. The stuff that got grandfathered in is still around, but when they rebuild these roads, or update them or improve them, which is constantly going on, they're gonna get rid of that light and put in an overpass instead. That's right. So when you have like a public works project this big,

and supposedly this is the biggest in the history of humankind, does that sound right? I mean, some have said that. Okay, we're gonna go with that because we live in the USA. But when you have a project that big, it's going to have some weird quirks and foibles and that kind of stuff.

All the Dave Berry adjectives. Yeah. And one of the things is that because of the way that some roads come up against one another, you have something called concurrency, where sometimes two different interstates will share the same road bed for a stretch. Yeah.

And so you can literally be driving on two different interstates by name. Right. And then one particular stretch of Virginia, 10-mile stretch around where Virginia and Tennessee come together. There's a concurrent stretch that's technically a wrong way concurrent stretch.

Oh. Did you know about this one? No. Yeah, so there's a stretch in Virginia, Interstate 81 and Interstate 77, and they're concurrent. So when you're driving on this 10-mile stretch, you're on both of these interstates. But the weird thing is, is 81 and 77,

because they're odd numbered highways or interstates, they run north to south, but this 10-mile stretch runs east to west. Pretty weird, right? Yeah. It gets even weirder, Chuck. For this wrong way concurrent stretch of highway, this 10-mile stretch,

you're actually going on I-81 north, but I-77 south, when the actual direction of travel you're on is going east to west. Yeah, I mean, when you think about perimeters too, there are times in Atlanta around the 285 where you're, you know, is it marked north or is it marked west?

Or is it marked south or west or north and east? It's very confusing. Depends on where you are in that circle. Right. And we should say that with the interstate numbering system, we got to talk about that. It's not meant to be a navigational guide. It's meant to keep from duplicating

the same interstate route in different parts of the country, and for the same interstate, or for the same numbered interstates to come up against one another, they're meant to keep everything quite separate. Yeah, from the beginning, they're like, get a map. People like, don't rely on these signs to get you places. No.

So if you are looking at a map of the United States going from the west to the east, odd number highways that run from north to south, the low numbers start in the west. So I-5 is the first one and that's over in California. That's right, great highway. Goes up to 95, which is on the eastern seaboard. Yeah, great, great expressway.

And then in between, you have all the other fives, the odd number ones, they run from north to south. Now, east to west, you have even numbered ones, and they start at the lowest in the south. I-20? Well, starting with 10. I-10 even. I'm a big fader by 20.

I-20's good. I've driven that thing from here to California quite a few times. Okay, so I can see why you'd be a fan of I-20 then. It's a nice drive right there. They get you there, that's their motto. But if you go up, up, up, you 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, there is no 50.

And apparently, Ed says the Department of Transportation used to get letters from people saying, like, you guys screwed up, there's no interstate 50. Oh, people. Which is hilarious. Too much time on their hands. Here's an interesting thing. Alaska and Puerto Rico,

they don't have to meet these federal interstate standards and technically, they're not federal interstates. They're interstates in name only. And then in Hawaii, you have three interstates all on Oahu and they are designated with an H instead of an I. Instead of interstate, it's whatever, H. I don't even know, I've never been there.

What are the numbers? I think there's an H5 maybe. H5. But the thing about it, even weirder than the fact that it's an H instead of an I, there's no dash. It looks really like Western European, you know, like the M5 or whatever. You're like, I see palm trees,

but I feel like I'm in Budapest. Right, exactly. That's weird, yeah. So we talked about, like at the very beginning, I said that one of the things that fascinates me are the massive sweeping effects that interstates have had on the United States. And a lot of people have studied the effects

and there have been some good and some bad. And I came across a forum, I can't remember on what site, but the question was, is it a net gain or a net loss for America with the interstate systems? And it seemed pretty evenly divided. You can make a case both ways that, you know, in these ways it helped

and these ways it was really terrible. And it's kind of a subjective judgment, whether when you add all those up, it was actually a gain for America or, you know, a loss. Well, we already talked about safety, definitely safer. If you listen to our Route 66 episode, you'll hear lots of stories about, quote unquote, dead towns, these small towns and junctions

where people traveled on these pretty popular highways and restaurants and local mom and pops, they went away in large part because of these expressways built right beside them sometimes. And that real estate where you get off on these exits is super expensive. So it's not like you're gonna see very few, you know,

mom, pa, restaurants at these exits, you're gonna see the major chains, the major gas stations, the major restaurants and shopping centers, all right, they're kind of congregated on the highways. Right, so that produced homogeneity across America, the interstates. There we go. But so that created this sense of homogeneity

where it was like the same national brands, the only ones who are big enough to buy up this real estate were the ones that you find at any given exit, you know, the same handful of them across the United States. So it lost its local flavor. For sure. That's a big effect. That's a huge loss for America.

Yeah, rail use definitely declined. Trucking definitely improved or benefited at least. What else, Ed says crime, which is something I never really thought about, but there have definitely been a lot of interstate killers who could pick someone up at a truck stop and kill them and get on that highway and get out of their quick like.

There was the I-5 Strangler, the I-70 killer, a series of murderers along I-40. I think that was like where they were like, people were driving around shooting other people at high speeds on the highway. Do you remember that in like the 80s or 90s? Yeah. Can't have that without the interstate.

No, so, you know, that's an effect. But another way that it affected crime too is found really pronouncedly in LA. Like LA became the bank robbery capital of the world from what I understand, at least the United States. And the reason why is because its massive system of interstates throughout the entire city allowed for really easy escape routes for bank robbers.

I could see that. There's a really great article by, I think his name's Jeff Manoff. Anyway, he has like the building blog. And it's really interesting. I'll see if I can find it, I'll tweet it out. It's a really great article. I should have looked it up.

Yeah, so in the end, like you said, I guess it's sort of split on how people view this. It's hard to measure some of these effects and put like a number on things like the death of the mom and pop store. Some of those are a little more esoteric and emotional. But it is interesting to think about. Yeah, I like them too, but at the same time,

it stinks that they're super congested. Sometimes the city's better than suburbia, but the interstates funneled people out into suburbia. Urban sprawl. Yeah, but yeah, it's fascinating to think like it's got the good and the bad. Just the sweeping effects are just so ingrained that you're just, they're tough to see sometimes, you know?

Yeah, I got one more thing actually. Oh, okay. The whole notion of the, especially in California, of putting the word the in front of the highways, the 134, the 210, the 101, whereas here on the East Coast, we say I-20, I-85. Right. It is not just an LA thing.

Apparently it's a lot of the Western states, especially on the West Coast, because my friend and fellow podcaster Adam Pranica was in Atlanta recently and he said, do I take the 20? And I just thought it sounded so funny. As you say, did you hit your head? And he's a Seattle guy, so they definitely say it there.

And I was just kind of curious where that came from and that's just a holdover. Like you mentioned, California had some of the first freeways, not interstates, but just larger highways. And they had, they were named, it was before they were numbered. So this was in like the 1940s, they had the Santa Monica freeway,

the Kuanga Pass freeway, it was designated by where it went. Right. And they were, you know, it would make sense to put a the in front of those. And that just sort of held over. And once they started numbering them, they couldn't shake it.

But even still, we still didn't use the back then because if you think about it, there was a famous highway from Indiana down to Miami called Dixie Highway. And here you'd call it Dixie Highway or old Dixie Highway, not the old Dixie Highway or the Dixie Highway. We just don't like the here. Maybe so.

It was a West Coast thing. It was too hot and everybody had too much hookworms to say the if it was unnecessary. So if this kind of thing floated your boat, go check out. I read many good articles, but one was by Linda Poon on city lab. Look that up.

Another was by a guy named Joseph Stromberg, Vox. And then that Jeff Manna, he doesn't have the building blog. He has cabinet is the name of his site. And that article about LA being the bank robbery capital is called forensic topology. And our own Grabster. Of course, hats off to Grabster. And since we said Grabster,

that means everybody is time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this follow up on the punk episode. Hey guys, just finished listening to your punk podcast. Being a hardcore kid, since I was in elementary school and stuff you should know fans since high school, I was stoked to see these two very different things that I listened to come together.

First of all, I'm sorry you guys ever felt intimidated by punks. The time when punk quote died in quote, is really when the scene got in general, way more enjoyable to be a part of. The old heads got jobs and families and stopped coming out to shows that weren't the bands they listened to coming up.

So the kids took over and created a more positive and inviting environment. In my lifetime, I've seen this go even further. In the last 10 years or so, hardcore fans have gone from at times hyper masculine, you know what, measuring contests to a safe place for queer kids and people of color to talk about their struggles.

Wow. The scene is very much alive from my birthplace in the upper Midwest to where I currently live in Appalachia. I am in the early stages of running DIY shows out of my basement. So if you ever wanna go to a hardcore show, just let me know and make the drive up to Knoxville. Okay, that sounds fair.

I promise I won't let anyone beat you up for calling the sex pistols punk, wink, wink. Thanks for all the great listening you guys have provided me over the years and please keep delving into different genres, even if you feel out of your depths. And that is from Evan and he also sent a very nice PS just about how we've been there for him

and we wanna say thanks for that too, Evan. That's really cool, man. Thanks a lot, Evan. And also, I mean, hats off for having hardcore shows in your basement. That's awesome. That is very awesome. Well, if you wanna be like Evan

and be super cool and hardcore and also super inclusive and nice, we wanna hear from you. You can go on to stuffyshouldknow.com and check us out on social media. Oh, I pulled that one out. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com.

On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.