5 ms·

I suppose it literally "could be only be one place", but it looks almost identical to thousands of small towns across the US. My entire childhood roadtrip exper

by rconti 7y ago

I suppose it literally "could be only be one place", but it looks almost identical to thousands of small towns across the US. My entire childhood roadtrip experience was up and down the west coast on I-5, and you could absolutely convince me this was somewhere like Grant's Pass, OR, if not for the signs with PA route information on them. You'd have to convince me a chain or two (Perkins, Sunoco) expanded westward in the past few years, but that wouldn't take much doing. I still don't quite follow this line: > "highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to" That seems no different from any other exit (you could hypothetically avoid any toll road by exiting and stopping and just staying wherever you are), but I guess the actual 'bypass' function of this road in the real world is less important than what it's come to be.

noer 7y ago
It is different in that I-70 ends at a traffic light, then technically continues onto what's essentially a regular four lane road before you have to make a turn onto a (very) long onramp to join the PA Turnpike (and I-76).
013a 7y ago
Yeah I can't agree with the author in saying that its "uniquely" Breezewood; this could be a picture of pretty much any "exit directly off the interstate" in especially the midwest, though likely around most of America. Towns like this pop up around interstates; it seems like interstates are planned to go near smaller towns, but not through them, so the town "creeps" over to the interstate and you end up with all the new developments happening over there, like big chain restaurants. And, of course, gas stations, because that just makes sense. I could point to three dozen towns between Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee that are like this.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  I looked at the photo and said to myself, "Is that West Lebanon in New Hampshire right before you get to White River Junction in Vermont?" And the answer is no, but it's pretty similar.
- munificent 7y ago
  I can confirm that this also looks like many places in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Less so, but also in Washington and Oregon. The photo (mainly due to use of the telephoto lens) provides a sort of dense charicature, but the overall look can be found in lots of places. Not the most beautiful aspect of the US, but a reasonable one. We're a huge, sparsely populated country where many people still get around by way of long driving trips. If you've been on the road for eight hours and you and the kids are hangry, often you want some gas and a reliable, safe, familiar meal. Gas stations and fast food chains provide that. Criticizing these photos is a bit like criticizing a landfill or sewage treatment plant as reflecting on the beauty of an entire area. It's essentially utilitarian infrastructure. It's ugly, sure, but you can't have everything be ivy-covered brick and artisanal bakeries.
  - hylaride 7y ago
    For the record, here's the spot on streetmap (the exxon is now gone) https://goo.gl/maps/wFx9ESH6vyBKk9mYA https://goo.gl/maps/wFx9ESH6vyBKk9mYA Looks a lot less...interesting than the photo.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > Criticizing these photos is a bit like criticizing a landfill or sewage treatment plant as reflecting on the beauty of an entire area. It's essentially utilitarian infrastructure. It's ugly, sure, but you can't have everything be ivy-covered brick and artisanal bakeries. Does it really have to be so ugly to be functional? This isn't some out of the way piece of infrastructure, these are areas of high traffic density and it is not unreasonable to ask why aesthetic considerations are so universally ignored in these types of areas in this country.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      I asked the same thing about the engineering offices where I worked, and found that the reason why was because the offices didn't matter much for the people in them- we move around a lot, and the only time you're in an office is when you're figuring something out in CAD or the like. The people who work all day long in offices understandably have better furniture- we just don't need all that much. People- interactions- matter more than places do- the happiest family I've ever met lived in a poorer neighborhood and their house was obviously not doing well.
- jcrawfordor 7y ago
  One of the major design objectives of the Eisenhower freeway system was to eliminate the need for freeway drivers to slow down and stop due to towns - it created freeways as "protected" roads. In cities, this often meant expanding or cutting new rights of way for the freeway, often by demolishing homes, a process that was expensive and politically unpopular (and, as we understand much more now than back then, extremely destructive to those areas). In smaller towns, though, it was often easier to just curve the freeway right around the outside of the town, putting it through undeveloped land. This had its own consequences, which you can see rather clearly in many smaller Western towns that formerly sat on a US Highway. The road through town which served as the highway spawned a great number of restaurants, gas stations, and especially motels. When a freeway was built along the same route as the US highway, it departed the old highway route before and after the town in a curving 'bypass.' The result was that the businesses in town lost their large pool of customers passing through, and often relocated or went out of business. This manifests throughout the west as a blight of abandoned and run-down motels doomed by the freeway system. You can often see this pattern in cities as well as smaller towns (e.g. Central Ave/historic US 66 in Albuquerque, Powell Blvd/US 26 in Portland). The bypassed highway sections were often, but not always, later signed a "business loops" of the freeway (fwy number on 'transparent' or green freeway shield), a designation which promised that following the road straight on would put you back onto the freeway reasonably promptly, but this did little to help the problem. And so, new businesses formed along the immediate exit of the freeway, which was at the outskirts of the town since the freeway was placed far enough out to obtain an unimpeded right of way. This has contributed significantly to the loss of the historic cores of towns and even cities, as well as reduced the economic vitality of many of these "truck stop towns." To a large extent, the freeway system created the modern American roadside stop. But, at the same time, it destroyed a different version of the roadside stop that had thrived before it. Just like the US highways had before it, and the railroads before that, right back to Puebloan trade routes in these parts.
ixtli 7y ago
It's unique only insofar as its nearly a perfect average of every rest stop or highway turnoff in America.
24gttghh 7y ago
The beginning of that paragraph explains exactly why (regardless of it's sanity) they did this: >Breezewood is a deliberately awkward transition between Interstate 70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where they (almost) meet. Back in the 1950s, as I-70 was being built, a law prohibited spending federal funds to channel drivers directly from a free road to a toll road. The law was later overturned, but to comply with it, highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to. More detail from Wikipedia: >I-70 uses a surface road (part of US 30) with at-grade intersections to connect the freeway heading south to Hancock, Maryland with the ramp to I-76, which through this section is the Pennsylvania Turnpike toll road. According to the Federal Highway Administration the peculiar arrangement at Breezewood resulted because at the time I-70's toll-free segment was built, the state did not qualify for federal funds under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 to build a direct interchange, unless it agreed to cease collecting tolls on the Turnpike once the construction bonds were retired;[11] a direct interchange would have meant that a westbound driver on I-70 could not choose between the toll route and a free alternative, but would be forced to enter the Turnpike. However, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was not willing to build the interchange with its own funds, due to the expected decrease in revenue once Interstate 80 was completed through the state.[11] Accordingly, the state chose to build the unusual Breezewood arrangement in lieu of a direct interchange, thus qualifying for federal funds because this arrangement gave drivers the option of continuing on the untolled US 30.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania#Unusual_I-70_alignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania#Unusu... Yay stupid bureaucracy...
- 205guy 7y ago
  I totally disagree. One can argue that free federal highways are problematic (car/truck and oil-dependent transportation), but given they exist, it is totally logical and consistent to not allow funneling drivers onto toll-roads. Otherwise, states and corporate entities would build toll roads in strategic locations to capture the highway traffic in a way that makes it difficult to avoid. Then the money spent on free highways is not effective, because the toll roads capture the travel budgets and reduce the usage and utility of the free-to-use highways. If that law didn't exist at the time, I could totally see local politicians and their federal representatives colluding to put revenue-generating toll road segments into the federal highways. I'm not sure why the law was later removed, but maybe once a critical network of free roads was established, it made sense to allow toll road connections for other local highways the feds didn't want to pay for.
drdeadringer 7y ago
> Grant's Pass, OR When I first passed through this place due to work, driving from one work location to another, I stayed the night because I could and "was allowed" [by the job] to break up the drive. It was a nice demarcation; some catching-up on "The Shield" was had. As jobs and life moved on, since I have some extended family and friends around the Portland area, Grant's Pass remained a demarcation but in different respects: as a boarder-crossing signal, as a sign-post, as a pit-stop as needed whilst I just kept going "straight on 'til morning" [I preferred one long drive back then, can't be sure now for reasons]. I cannot tell you anything particularly special about Grant's Pass other than "it's near the border" and "I-5 goes through it". No offence intended to people living there.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Grants pass actually has people living there (the only time I visited was to pick up my aunt and take her back to Seattle for some reason), it isn’t just a rest stop on I5.
- rconti 7y ago
  Sure; I just picked it randomly as one of a number of childhood stops we made. We usually broke up our Seattle <-> Fresno drive into 12 hour and 6 hour segments, one each day. Going south, we'd usually stay in Red Bluff of Redding; going north, Grant's Pass or Roseburg. And, regardless of need for accommodation for the night, these towns (and many others, but these are the largest I remember) offered ample fuel and fast food options.
empath75 7y ago
Yeah the article is just flat wrong. There are lots of rest stops all up and down the east coast that look exactly like that.
grillvogel 7y ago
I disagree, i have lived in or driven across a lot of the US, and I instantly recognized these pics as Breezewood when they started making the rounds lately.
pdonis 7y ago
> That seems no different from any other exit The "avoid the turnpike" part refers to the fact that the segment of road in the picture, which has to be traversed to get from the turnpike to I-70 or vice versa, is actually US Route 30, so hypothetically someone coming off I-70 could just stay on that route instead of being "forced" to get onto the turnpike. There are a couple of other interchanges on the PA turnpike that work similarly: the one with I-79 north of Pittsburgh (US 19 is in between) and the one with I-81 at Carlisle (US 11 is in between). Most freeway interchanges between toll and non-toll highways don't work like that; you just go straight from one to the other.

by rconti 7y ago

noer 7y ago

It is different in that I-70 ends at a traffic light, then technically continues onto what's essentially a regular four lane road before you have to make a turn onto a (very) long onramp to join the PA Turnpike (and I-76).

013a 7y ago

Yeah I can't agree with the author in saying that its "uniquely" Breezewood; this could be a picture of pretty much any "exit directly off the interstate" in especially the midwest, though likely around most of America. Towns like this pop up around interstates; it seems like interstates are planned to go near smaller towns, but not through them, so the town "creeps" over to the interstate and you end up with all the new developments happening over there, like big chain restaurants. And, of course, gas stations, because that just makes sense. I could point to three dozen towns between Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee that are like this.

dsr_ 7y ago
I looked at the photo and said to myself, "Is that West Lebanon in New Hampshire right before you get to White River Junction in Vermont?" And the answer is no, but it's pretty similar.
munificent 7y ago
I can confirm that this also looks like many places in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Less so, but also in Washington and Oregon. The photo (mainly due to use of the telephoto lens) provides a sort of dense charicature, but the overall look can be found in lots of places. Not the most beautiful aspect of the US, but a reasonable one. We're a huge, sparsely populated country where many people still get around by way of long driving trips. If you've been on the road for eight hours and you and the kids are hangry, often you want some gas and a reliable, safe, familiar meal. Gas stations and fast food chains provide that. Criticizing these photos is a bit like criticizing a landfill or sewage treatment plant as reflecting on the beauty of an entire area. It's essentially utilitarian infrastructure. It's ugly, sure, but you can't have everything be ivy-covered brick and artisanal bakeries.
- hylaride 7y ago
  For the record, here's the spot on streetmap (the exxon is now gone) https://goo.gl/maps/wFx9ESH6vyBKk9mYA https://goo.gl/maps/wFx9ESH6vyBKk9mYA Looks a lot less...interesting than the photo.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > Criticizing these photos is a bit like criticizing a landfill or sewage treatment plant as reflecting on the beauty of an entire area. It's essentially utilitarian infrastructure. It's ugly, sure, but you can't have everything be ivy-covered brick and artisanal bakeries. Does it really have to be so ugly to be functional? This isn't some out of the way piece of infrastructure, these are areas of high traffic density and it is not unreasonable to ask why aesthetic considerations are so universally ignored in these types of areas in this country.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    I asked the same thing about the engineering offices where I worked, and found that the reason why was because the offices didn't matter much for the people in them- we move around a lot, and the only time you're in an office is when you're figuring something out in CAD or the like. The people who work all day long in offices understandably have better furniture- we just don't need all that much. People- interactions- matter more than places do- the happiest family I've ever met lived in a poorer neighborhood and their house was obviously not doing well.
jcrawfordor 7y ago
One of the major design objectives of the Eisenhower freeway system was to eliminate the need for freeway drivers to slow down and stop due to towns - it created freeways as "protected" roads. In cities, this often meant expanding or cutting new rights of way for the freeway, often by demolishing homes, a process that was expensive and politically unpopular (and, as we understand much more now than back then, extremely destructive to those areas). In smaller towns, though, it was often easier to just curve the freeway right around the outside of the town, putting it through undeveloped land. This had its own consequences, which you can see rather clearly in many smaller Western towns that formerly sat on a US Highway. The road through town which served as the highway spawned a great number of restaurants, gas stations, and especially motels. When a freeway was built along the same route as the US highway, it departed the old highway route before and after the town in a curving 'bypass.' The result was that the businesses in town lost their large pool of customers passing through, and often relocated or went out of business. This manifests throughout the west as a blight of abandoned and run-down motels doomed by the freeway system. You can often see this pattern in cities as well as smaller towns (e.g. Central Ave/historic US 66 in Albuquerque, Powell Blvd/US 26 in Portland). The bypassed highway sections were often, but not always, later signed a "business loops" of the freeway (fwy number on 'transparent' or green freeway shield), a designation which promised that following the road straight on would put you back onto the freeway reasonably promptly, but this did little to help the problem. And so, new businesses formed along the immediate exit of the freeway, which was at the outskirts of the town since the freeway was placed far enough out to obtain an unimpeded right of way. This has contributed significantly to the loss of the historic cores of towns and even cities, as well as reduced the economic vitality of many of these "truck stop towns." To a large extent, the freeway system created the modern American roadside stop. But, at the same time, it destroyed a different version of the roadside stop that had thrived before it. Just like the US highways had before it, and the railroads before that, right back to Puebloan trade routes in these parts.

ixtli 7y ago

It's unique only insofar as its nearly a perfect average of every rest stop or highway turnoff in America.

24gttghh 7y ago

The beginning of that paragraph explains exactly why (regardless of it's sanity) they did this: >Breezewood is a deliberately awkward transition between Interstate 70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where they (almost) meet. Back in the 1950s, as I-70 was being built, a law prohibited spending federal funds to channel drivers directly from a free road to a toll road. The law was later overturned, but to comply with it, highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to. More detail from Wikipedia: >I-70 uses a surface road (part of US 30) with at-grade intersections to connect the freeway heading south to Hancock, Maryland with the ramp to I-76, which through this section is the Pennsylvania Turnpike toll road. According to the Federal Highway Administration the peculiar arrangement at Breezewood resulted because at the time I-70's toll-free segment was built, the state did not qualify for federal funds under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 to build a direct interchange, unless it agreed to cease collecting tolls on the Turnpike once the construction bonds were retired;[11] a direct interchange would have meant that a westbound driver on I-70 could not choose between the toll route and a free alternative, but would be forced to enter the Turnpike. However, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was not willing to build the interchange with its own funds, due to the expected decrease in revenue once Interstate 80 was completed through the state.[11] Accordingly, the state chose to build the unusual Breezewood arrangement in lieu of a direct interchange, thus qualifying for federal funds because this arrangement gave drivers the option of continuing on the untolled US 30.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania#Unusual_I-70_alignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania#Unusu... Yay stupid bureaucracy...

205guy 7y ago
I totally disagree. One can argue that free federal highways are problematic (car/truck and oil-dependent transportation), but given they exist, it is totally logical and consistent to not allow funneling drivers onto toll-roads. Otherwise, states and corporate entities would build toll roads in strategic locations to capture the highway traffic in a way that makes it difficult to avoid. Then the money spent on free highways is not effective, because the toll roads capture the travel budgets and reduce the usage and utility of the free-to-use highways. If that law didn't exist at the time, I could totally see local politicians and their federal representatives colluding to put revenue-generating toll road segments into the federal highways. I'm not sure why the law was later removed, but maybe once a critical network of free roads was established, it made sense to allow toll road connections for other local highways the feds didn't want to pay for.

drdeadringer 7y ago

> Grant's Pass, OR When I first passed through this place due to work, driving from one work location to another, I stayed the night because I could and "was allowed" [by the job] to break up the drive. It was a nice demarcation; some catching-up on "The Shield" was had. As jobs and life moved on, since I have some extended family and friends around the Portland area, Grant's Pass remained a demarcation but in different respects: as a boarder-crossing signal, as a sign-post, as a pit-stop as needed whilst I just kept going "straight on 'til morning" [I preferred one long drive back then, can't be sure now for reasons]. I cannot tell you anything particularly special about Grant's Pass other than "it's near the border" and "I-5 goes through it". No offence intended to people living there.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Grants pass actually has people living there (the only time I visited was to pick up my aunt and take her back to Seattle for some reason), it isn’t just a rest stop on I5.

rconti 7y ago
Sure; I just picked it randomly as one of a number of childhood stops we made. We usually broke up our Seattle <-> Fresno drive into 12 hour and 6 hour segments, one each day. Going south, we'd usually stay in Red Bluff of Redding; going north, Grant's Pass or Roseburg. And, regardless of need for accommodation for the night, these towns (and many others, but these are the largest I remember) offered ample fuel and fast food options.

empath75 7y ago

Yeah the article is just flat wrong. There are lots of rest stops all up and down the east coast that look exactly like that.

grillvogel 7y ago

I disagree, i have lived in or driven across a lot of the US, and I instantly recognized these pics as Breezewood when they started making the rounds lately.

pdonis 7y ago

> That seems no different from any other exit The "avoid the turnpike" part refers to the fact that the segment of road in the picture, which has to be traversed to get from the turnpike to I-70 or vice versa, is actually US Route 30, so hypothetically someone coming off I-70 could just stay on that route instead of being "forced" to get onto the turnpike. There are a couple of other interchanges on the PA turnpike that work similarly: the one with I-79 north of Pittsburgh (US 19 is in between) and the one with I-81 at Carlisle (US 11 is in between). Most freeway interchanges between toll and non-toll highways don't work like that; you just go straight from one to the other.