Editing Interstate Highway System (section)

===Planning===
{{listen |filename=Cadillacsquareexcerpt.ogg |title=Remarks in Cadillac Square, Detroit |description=President Eisenhower delivered remarks about the need for a new highway program at [[Cadillac Square]] in Detroit on October 29, 1954<br />[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/audiotext.cfm#cadillac Text of speech excerpt]}}
[[File:Project for the Development of National Highways of the United States.png|thumb|The Pershing Map]]
[[File:FDR Proposed Highways.jpg|thumb|FDR's hand-drawn map from 1938]]

The United States government's efforts to construct a national network of highways began on an ''ad hoc'' basis with the passage of the [[Federal Aid Road Act of 1916]], which provided $75&nbsp;million over a five-year period for [[matching funds]] to the states for the construction and improvement of highways.<ref>{{cite book |first = Carlos Arnaldo |last = Schwantes |title = Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West |location = Bloomington |publisher = Indiana University Press |year = 2003 |isbn = 9780253342027 |page = 142 }}</ref> The nation's revenue needs associated with [[World War I]] prevented any significant implementation of this policy, which expired in 1921.

In December 1918, E. J. Mehren, a civil engineer and the editor of ''[[Engineering News-Record]]'', presented his "A Suggested National Highway Policy and Plan"<ref name="mehren">{{cite magazine |first = E.J. |last = Mehren |title = A Suggested National Highway Policy and Plan |magazine = [[Engineering News-Record]] |date = December 19, 1918 |volume = 81 |issue = 25 |pages = 1112–1117 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=d7tCAQAAMAAJ&q=%22A+suggested+national+highway+policy+and+plan%22+Dec.+19+1918&pg=PA1109 |issn = 0891-9526 |access-date = August 17, 2015 |via = [[Google Books]] }}</ref> during a gathering of the State Highway Officials and Highway Industries Association at the Congress Hotel in Chicago.<ref>{{cite web |first = Richard |last = Weingroff |date = October 15, 2013 |publisher = Federal Highway Administration |title = 'Clearly Vicious as a Matter of Policy': The Fight Against Federal-Aid |url = https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/hwyhist04a.cfm |access-date = August 17, 2015 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150924032716/http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/hwyhist04a.cfm |archive-date = September 24, 2015 |url-status = live }}</ref> In the plan, Mehren proposed a {{convert|50,000|mi|km|adj=on}} system, consisting of five east–west routes and 10 north–south routes. The system would include two percent of all roads and would pass through every state at a cost of {{convert|25,000|$/mi|$/km}}, providing commercial as well as military transport benefits.<ref name= "mehren" />

In 1919, the US Army sent an expedition across the US to determine the difficulties that military vehicles would have on a cross-country trip. Leaving from [[the Ellipse]] near the [[White House]] on July 7, the [[1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy|Motor Transport Corps convoy]] needed 62 days to drive {{convert|3,200|mi|km}} on the [[Lincoln Highway]] to the [[Presidio of San Francisco]] along the [[Golden Gate]]. The convoy suffered many setbacks and problems on the route, such as poor-quality bridges, broken crankshafts, and engines clogged with desert sand.<ref name="Watson article on Motor Transport convoy">{{cite magazine |last1 = Watson |first1 = Bruce |title = Ike's Excellent Adventure |magazine = American Heritage |volume = 65 |issue = 4 |date = July–August 2020 |url = https://www.americanheritage.com/ikes-excellent-adventure |access-date = July 9, 2020 |archive-date = July 9, 2020 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200709110417/https://www.americanheritage.com/ikes-excellent-adventure |url-status = live }}</ref>

[[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Dwight Eisenhower]], then a 28-year-old [[Brevet (military)|brevet]] lieutenant colonel,<ref>{{cite book |last = Ambrose |first = Stephen |year = 1983 |title = Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect (1893–1952) |volume = 1 |location = New York |publisher = Simon & Schuster }}{{page needed|date=December 2021}}</ref> accompanied the trip "through darkest America with truck and tank," as he later described it. Some roads in the West were a "succession of dust, ruts, pits, and holes."<ref name="Watson article on Motor Transport convoy" />

As the landmark 1916 law expired, new legislation was passed—the [[Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921]] (Phipps Act). This new road construction initiative once again provided for federal matching funds for road construction and improvement, $75&nbsp;million allocated annually.<ref name="schwantes152">{{harvp|ps=.|Schwantes|2003|p=152}}</ref> Moreover, this new legislation for the first time sought to target these funds to the construction of a national road grid of interconnected "primary highways", setting up cooperation among the various state highway planning boards.<ref name="schwantes152" />

The [[Federal Highway Administration|Bureau of Public Roads]] asked the [[United States Army|Army]] to provide a list of roads that it considered necessary for national defense.<ref>{{cite book |last = McNichol |first = Dan |year = 2006a |title = The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System |location = New York |publisher = Sterling |isbn = 978-1-4027-3468-7 |page = 87 }}</ref> In 1922, General [[John J. Pershing]], former head of the [[American Expeditionary Force]] in Europe during the war, complied by submitting a detailed network of {{convert|20,000|mi|km}} of interconnected primary highways—the so-called [[Pershing Map]].<ref>{{harvp|ps=.|Schwantes|2003|p=153}}</ref>

A boom in road construction followed throughout the decade of the 1920s, with such projects as the [[Parkways in New York State|New York parkway system]] constructed as part of a new national highway system. As automobile traffic increased, planners saw a need for such an interconnected national system to supplement the existing, largely non-freeway, [[United States Numbered Highways]] system. By the late 1930s, planning had expanded to a system of new superhighways.

{{Wikisource-multi|object=section|leading=2px|Toll Roads and Free Roads |Interregional Highways}}
In 1938, President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] gave [[Thomas Harris MacDonald|Thomas MacDonald]], chief at the Bureau of Public Roads, a hand-drawn map of the United States marked with eight superhighway corridors for study.<ref>{{harvp|ps=.|McNichol|2006a|p=78}}</ref> In 1939, Bureau of Public Roads Division of Information chief [[Herbert S. Fairbank]] wrote a report called ''Toll Roads and Free Roads'', "the first formal description of what became the Interstate Highway System" and, in 1944, the similarly themed ''Interregional Highways''.<ref>{{cite magazine |last = Weingroff |first = Richard F. |title = The Federal-State Partnership at Work: The Concept Man |magazine = Public Roads |volume = 60 |issue = 1 |date = Summer 1996 |url = http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/summer96/p96su7b.htm#9 |access-date = March 16, 2012 |issn = 0033-3735 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100528132734/http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/summer96/p96su7b.htm#9 |archive-date = May 28, 2010 |url-status = dead }}</ref>