2. Germany’s autobahn inspired Eisenhower to build the Interstate Highway System
In 1919 the US Army established a convoy from the Motor Transport Corps, tasked with driving across the country from Washington DC to the Presidio in San Francisco. Among the military personnel accompanying the expedition was Lieutenant Dwight Eisenhower. The drive took 62 days, covered 3,200 miles, and was fraught with breakdowns, vehicles stuck on rutted or muddied roads, and bridges inadequate for the weight of the vehicles attempting to cross them. In his memoirs, Eisenhower later recalled, “The old convoy had started me thinking about good two-lane highways”. He wasn’t alone. In 1922 General John Pershing submitted a report to Congress, prepared by Thomas MacDonald, head of Bureau of Public Roads, which included an over 30-feet long map displaying a national road system, suitable to support national defense. The report addressed the deficiencies in America’s road system identified during World War I.
Both Franklin Roosevelt and his successor, Harry Truman, had plans and studies prepared describing a national highway system, which would be comprised of limited access highways. In the former’s case, World War II took precedent. In the latter’s, Congress balked at providing the funds, and the railroad and coal industries opposed the idea rabidly. When Eisenhower entered office in 1953, he supported the idea of a new federally funded highway system and ordered General Lucius Clay to head a committee to study its feasibility and prepare a plan to develop it. Rather than a system of freeways, Ike wanted the system to consist of toll roads. Clay persuaded him that tolls would not be supported by the states, other than in areas with dense populations along the coasts and the Great Lakes. Aiding Clay in the project was Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson.