Back on the ground, Lt. Col. Dwight David Eisenhower had not seen overseas service during World War I, but in 1919 he was assigned to the First Transcontinental Military Convoy – an operation designed to test the Army’s capability in moving troops from coast to coast. The journey involved 79 military vehicles of various sizes and nearly 300 personnel. It extended 3200 grueling miles from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. Eisenhower made a detailed report back to his superiors on the mishaps, mechanical difficulties and challenging road conditions.
Years later, as the supreme commander of Allied forces during World War II, Eisenhower experienced the other side of the spectrum when he saw the German autobahn. It was, he said, a “superlative system.”
So when Ike was elected President in 1952, he advocated for a similar highway network across the United States. As the world descended into a Cold War, the paramount argument was that an interstate highway system was needed for civil defense. But Eisenhower’s administration also made the case that a modern roads system would reduce traffic fatalities as well as wear and tear on vehicles, and improve the efficiency of farm-to-market delivery. In 1956, Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 to fund interstate highway construction.
Freeway construction rapidly commenced, but it took another decade before a federal Department of Transportation was established during Lyndon Johnson’s administration to coordinate all of these moving parts of the nation’s infrastructure.
It has become an increasingly complex task since then. Today the Department oversees enough agencies to go into a bowl of alphabet soup: the FAA (aviation), FHWA (highways), FMCSA (motor carrier safety), FRA (railroads), FTA (transit), GLS (St. Lawrence Seaway), MARAD (maritime), NHTSA (highway traffic safety), OIG (DOT’s Inspector General Office) and PHMSA (pipeline and hazardous materials safety).
One of the failures of American leadership in government and industry over the last few decades has been the unwillingness to acknowledge that fossil fuel-dependent technologies are destroying the biosphere as we know it.
America in 2021 really doesn’t have the luxury of time to dwell on the irony that the oldest man ever elected President of the United States may also be one of the most forward-thinking leaders this country has ever had. Biden’s ambitious infrastructure plan acknowledges the importance of people and the environment we live in. It provides Americans with the opportunity to give fossil fuel the heave-ho and to commit more fully to wind, solar, broadband, and perhaps even Hyperloop technologies.
Biden’s expansive view of infrastructure may be hard for more conservatively-attuned folk to comprehend, but in his view, in order to Build Back Better – better than Japan, better than the United Arab Emirates, better than China and, most importantly, better for the world – the United States has to make bold investments in American imagination and ingenuity.
Bipartisan infrastructure bill
ASCE 2021 Infrastructure Report Card