More quotes from my InRoads article:
Governments in North America after the war, buoyed by prosperity, undertook to build all the roads and bridges necessary. Which led to more productivity and wealth, and more tax revenues to build more roads, which generated more tax revenues to build more roads. …
As Allied military leader in World War II, Dwight Eisenhower had seen the German autobahn network first-hand. In 1956, as president, he signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, unleashing billions of dollars through the Highway Trust Fund to build the Interstate highway system, the largest public works project in human history. Canada had already proceeded in 1948 with the federal-provincial agreement to fund and build the Trans-Canada Highway. …
It seemed like a perpetual motion machine, one that delivered votes and jobs and justified devoting huge resources to constructing road capacity, to the point where people believed it an entitlement – and a useful justification for stimulus and employment programs in downturns, the perennial shovel-ready project. …
These continental highways are the single biggest engineering projects in any town or city they go through. They changed the economy and culture and the way urban regions were shaped. Governments created a continent-spanning system of highways that would, with the exception of older roads and bridges in the east, seem to the casual driver unlimited and free.
