I posted this idea in my mass transit thread, but thought it was tangential enough that it could perhaps deserve a thread of its own. Essentially, what would happen if the idea of building a high-quality system of federally-funded controlled access highways across the United States appeared about a decade earlier than it did, in the late 1920s instead of the late 1930s, and so gets picked up by FDR as part of the New Deal, such that what is effectively the IHS ends up starting construction in the 1930s instead of the 1950s? To put it a bit differently, what would happen if the Interstate system looked, in terms of timing, a bit more like Germany's autobahns?
WI: Early United States Interstate System?
- Thread starter Workable Goblin
- Start date
Based on OTL they would be toll road. When the Interstate system was Planned people would be against toll free roads.
Trains were the main long distance transportation system which is why a lot of funding went into them. Trucks and cars were mostly considered 'local' transport so beyond local road networks it wasn't in the mindset of the time. Even after WWII trains were still considered the 'main' route of transportation and only then were planes being considered. The need to keep production of "some" type of transport building in Detroit to utilize war-time expanded production was what led to the massive media campaign that made a 'car in every garage' a general dream of Americans. Once large segments of Americans were driving they needed places to go and ways to get there which fed into Eisenhower's plans since he needed a secondary transportation net to back up railways in case of a major war. And you needed to have American experience ON the German autobahns to give them something to compare to the European road network so you can't have highways before autobahns 
Randy
Randy
marathag
Banned
You had US turnpikes and parkways that started in 1908, for limited access high speed roads. Didn't need to see Autobahns.
In 1938 Congress had the Bureau of Public Roads issue a report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, was the concept what would be the Interstate Highway System after WWII
In 1938 Congress had the Bureau of Public Roads issue a report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, was the concept what would be the Interstate Highway System after WWII
US highway numbering system started in the mid 20s and is different from the Interstate System
That's not consistent with the historical record. As I said, Congress was providing some degree of funding for major highways beginning in the early 1920s, and the numbered highway system--which consists of interstate routes--dates back to that time. As marathag says, the actual genesis of the Interstate system was in the late 1930s. It was fairly obvious world-wide that motor vehicles would be a major part of the transport mix of the future, so Germany was merely the vanguard of a larger highway-building movement.
That was the 'Federal Highway's numbers. You can still see those on the old shield badges some states maintain. Most were built in the 1920s. Indiana like most states had a massive highway construction project in full swing by 1925.
The federal highways are still an important part of the US highway network. They're usually built to a lower standard than the Interstates, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it means it's much more financially feasible to build them very densely (and indeed, the overall route length is about three times larger for the federal network than for the Interstate system).
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You might see earlier suburbanization, which would make suburbanization less associated with white flight as it would significantly predate civil rights.
IIRC didn't the Italian autostrada beat them to the punch by a number of years?
Some new early 20th Century suburbs were minority populated. The 1919 Chicago race riots accelerated the displacement of African Americans to the new south side growth. Mid 20th Century White Flight was as much a result of real-estate manipulation and related constructs. Alter the perception of markets and the racial neighborhoods of the mid 20th to latter 20th Century might be as likely in the suburbs as the old city neighborhoods.
The first limited access high speed road in the modern sense was the Pennsylvania Turnpike, opened from near Carlisle to Irwin in 1939.
What if US-61 known in south Louisiana as the Airline Highway, a four lane road built during Huey Long's term as governor in the early 1930's was extended and improved to true limited access from New Orleans to Chicago?
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