Research Catalog

Title

Interstate : highway politics and policy since 1939 / Mark H. Rose and Raymond A. Mohl.

Author

Rose, Mark H., 1942-

Publication

Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, c2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Mohl, Raymond A.

Description

xxiv, 282 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

This new, expanded edition brings the story of the Interstates into the twenty-first century. It includes an account of the destruction of homes, businesses, and communities as the urban expressways of the highway network destroyed large portions of the nation's central cities. Mohl and Rose analyze the subsequent urban freeway revolts, when citizen protest groups battled highway builders in San Francisco, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and other cities. Their detailed research in the archival records of the Bureau of Public Roads, the Federal Highway Administration, and the U.S. Department of Transportation brings to light significant evidence of federal action to tame the spreading freeway revolts, curb the authority of state highway engineers, and promote the devolution of transportation decision making to the state and regional level. They analyze the passage of congressional legislation in the 1990s, especially the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), that initiated a major shift of Highway Trust Fund dollars to mass transit and light rail, as well as to hiking trails and bike lanes. Mohl and Rose conclude with the surprising popularity of the recent freeway teardown movement, an effort to replace deteriorating, environmentally damaging, and sometimes dangerous elevated expressway segments through the inner cities. Sometimes led by former anti-highway activists of the 1960s and 1970s, teardown movements aim to restore the urban street grid, provide space for new streetcar lines, and promote urban revitalization efforts. This revised edition continues to be marked by accessible writing and solid research by two well-known scholars.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Subjects

• History
• Transportation and state > United States > History
• Express highways > Government policy > United States > History
• Express highways > United States > History

Genre/Form

History

Note

• "Originally published in 1979 by the University Press of Kansas"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-266) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Rebuilding America: express highways and visions of reform, 1890-1941 -- Planning for postwar America, 1941-1944 -- The politics of highway finance, 1945-1950 -- Project Adequate Roads: traffic jams, business, and government, 1951-1955 -- The highway and the city, 1945-1955 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower and express highway politics, 1954-1955 -- The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 -- The interstates and the cities -- Stop the road: freeway revolts in American cities -- The U.S. Department of Transportation and the freeway revolt -- ISTEA and the reframing of American highway politics, 1956-1995 -- The freeway teardown movement in American cities.

ISBN

• 9781572337251
• 1572337257

OCLC

• 773667405
• SCSB-12013976

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library