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Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary

Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary runways for planes but I'm unsure as to how much that helps your case.

thrower123 7y ago
The only reason that I-95, for instance, extends as far as it does, is because of the Strategic Air Command bomber base in Limestone, ME. A lot of the other more nonsensical routings of the interstate system make sense when you take into consideration where strategic bases were located in the 50s and 60s.
hollerith 7y ago
War puts enormous strain on a country's ability to move things around the country.
steve19 7y ago
Wars are won with logistics not guns. Getting troops and supplies across the country would be key to defending it from an invasion. The interstate highway system was built in part for military purposes and partly designed by the Army: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
ghaff 7y ago
Evacuating cities in the event of an atomic attack was also cited as a reason though that obviously seems questionable as well. As I wrote in another comment, the defense justification was probably mostly just a way to get the help get the act passed.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Katrina and Harvey showed that at best, evacuating cities with highways is an extremely long, drawn out process that will most likely leave the most poor and destitute (who don't have cars) totally stranded.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Yes. Basically you can't rapidly evacuate cities. Maybe highways help a bit but, if you can barely handle commuter traffic on a given workday, you're certainly not going to completely and quickly evacuate a city if there's some threat--and that's before you even get to the issue of people who don't own cars. So the idea that highways would be useful if there were an imminent threat of nuclear attack looks pretty silly.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      It depends on how quickly and how far you need people to evacuate. Lower Manhattan on 9/11 was evacuated mostly by foot and sea, with over half a million evacuated by boat alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_response_following_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_response_following_Se...
  - slededit 7y ago
    They don't completely solve the problem, but it would be much harder to evacuate the cities without the highway system in place.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      Rail has upper capacity in the ranges of 60-90k passengers per hour, whereas car lanes are in the range of 2-3K passengers per hour in free flowing conditions. Granted that 60-90K figure doesn't involve people trying to shove furniture, pets etc. into their vehicles, but you could move quite a lot more with rail.
      - slededit 7y ago
        Rail is also used as part of the evacuation, but most people will want their car so they can carry enough supplies to last for the evacuation period. In fact one of the most egregious aspects of the Katrina disaster was New Orleans explicitly told Amtrak their trains were unnecessary [1]. >"We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way," said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. "The city declined." [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001529_4.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09...
jtokoph 7y ago
It provide ways for military vehicles to cross the country easily and long stretches of highway could be used as aircraft runways.

thrower123 7y ago

The only reason that I-95, for instance, extends as far as it does, is because of the Strategic Air Command bomber base in Limestone, ME. A lot of the other more nonsensical routings of the interstate system make sense when you take into consideration where strategic bases were located in the 50s and 60s.

hollerith 7y ago

War puts enormous strain on a country's ability to move things around the country.

steve19 7y ago

Wars are won with logistics not guns. Getting troops and supplies across the country would be key to defending it from an invasion. The interstate highway system was built in part for military purposes and partly designed by the Army: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

ghaff 7y ago

Evacuating cities in the event of an atomic attack was also cited as a reason though that obviously seems questionable as well. As I wrote in another comment, the defense justification was probably mostly just a way to get the help get the act passed.

bobthepanda 7y ago
Katrina and Harvey showed that at best, evacuating cities with highways is an extremely long, drawn out process that will most likely leave the most poor and destitute (who don't have cars) totally stranded.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Yes. Basically you can't rapidly evacuate cities. Maybe highways help a bit but, if you can barely handle commuter traffic on a given workday, you're certainly not going to completely and quickly evacuate a city if there's some threat--and that's before you even get to the issue of people who don't own cars. So the idea that highways would be useful if there were an imminent threat of nuclear attack looks pretty silly.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    It depends on how quickly and how far you need people to evacuate. Lower Manhattan on 9/11 was evacuated mostly by foot and sea, with over half a million evacuated by boat alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_response_following_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_response_following_Se...
- slededit 7y ago
  They don't completely solve the problem, but it would be much harder to evacuate the cities without the highway system in place.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Rail has upper capacity in the ranges of 60-90k passengers per hour, whereas car lanes are in the range of 2-3K passengers per hour in free flowing conditions. Granted that 60-90K figure doesn't involve people trying to shove furniture, pets etc. into their vehicles, but you could move quite a lot more with rail.
    - slededit 7y ago
      Rail is also used as part of the evacuation, but most people will want their car so they can carry enough supplies to last for the evacuation period. In fact one of the most egregious aspects of the Katrina disaster was New Orleans explicitly told Amtrak their trains were unnecessary [1]. >"We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way," said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. "The city declined." [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001529_4.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09...

jtokoph 7y ago

It provide ways for military vehicles to cross the country easily and long stretches of highway could be used as aircraft runways.