If the American Interstate system didn’t exist, how would it be designed in 2022?

21 comments

1. Well for one, I think it would have taken longer than 2 years to build the entirety of I-90 in Massachusetts.

   There would be a lot of more environmental regulations and probably not as many neighborhoods would be bulldozed.

   But the roads themselves probably wouldn’t be constructed all that differently.

2. While the highway system is mostly the same as it was decades ago, we’ve done a lot of small-scale route straightening projects since then, we have much better and cheaper technology for flattening land and boring tunnels now that we can use to decrease distances and remove roundabout routes. We’ve also built many new small routes into the highway system, looping around cities to prevent long-distance traffic, particularly trucks, from traveling through urban centers. So we kind of know the answer, because we’ve been rebuilding it using those new practices the whole time!

3. Poorly.

4. Probably more highways in the sunbelt, less in New England and Midwest, probably bigger mediums and side pavements to deal with wrecks and emergency crews. More emergency lanes.

5. In rural areas it would look the same as it does now.

   It would probably not be built straight through dense urban neighborhoods with no regard for the existing communities.

6. Without the american interstate system, most of our cities would also be structured in some fundamentally different ways. As a result, if we made it to 2022 *without* it, I’m highly skeptical that there would be any incentive or need for one to be designed *now* in the first place.

7. * It’d cost a lot more
   * We’d have a lot more impact research
   * People think impact is just environmental but we also would be looking at the impact to neighborhoods as well.
   * This probably means more building ring routes like I-465 in Indianapolis or I-495 in the DC area and less routes like I-65/70 that cut through downtown Indianapolis.
   * If we didn’t have an Interstate system, it’d be interesting to see how our cities would’ve developed. I think there’d still be a suburban growth but it’d probably be much slower geographic spread out rather than what we saw in the 60s and 70s.

8. It wouldn’t be, the population in the US has doubled since 1960 and that means that there would be significantly more landowners to buy out to build the highways. There would be significantly more stoplights in our lives and more congestion

9. Plowing right through the city centers would be avoided.

10. It probably wouldn’t be built because of all the environmental impact studies needed and the landowners who who sue the eminent domain suits.

11. A freeway system would still exist as a lot of US Routes were being converted to those already. However, the standards would be all over the place as each state would have their own set a rules. What would end up would be similar to what Canada and Australia has today; routes in the most populated areas being freeways and routes less populated not setup to those standards and may still be two-lane. So establishing an interstate highway system in 2022 would incorporate those existing routes and identify routes for better connection across the nation from there, but slower as they are today already (i.e. I-69, I-14, and I-11).

12. It would never get built, at least not near any cities. We would spend decades doing feasibility studies and public impact review boards and the price would run into the trillions before we just gave up. NIMBYism is too strong these days.

13. Mostly it would just continue not existing, I think.

    A lot of towns exist at all or became good sized cities specifically because of interstate intersections. I imagine had those not existed other places would have grown up and the routes would be notably different. Particularly in states that we’re much less populous then than now.

14. It wouldn’t get done until 3022

15. The US Highway system would probably just make regular US Highways have city/town freeway bypasses, and 2-4 lane them in rural areas.

    There would be a lot more at grade intersections as a result, along with highways being signed onto surface streets.

16. It wouldn’t. The U.S. stopped passing major laws that substantially improved the country a few decades ago. Now we just argue about genitalia and whether slavery was bad or not.

17. For one you’d probably have way more public transportation and rail. So that is probably going to change how you decide where to build roads.

18. Probably instead of freeways alone, it should be a mixed system with high-speed rails like Japan.

    And freeways should go around big cities, and not cut through them.

    Airports should also be outside big cities, with freeways and rails passing through the airport zones.

    Different speed limits for different lanes like Germany. Left-most should be unlimited, and gradually reduce when you come to the right.

    Train stations, like airports, should have rental car pick-up/drop-off and extended car parks, so you can cover partial journeys in trains and cars if you want to.

19. The republicans would whine about privatization and the democrats would whine about the environment and safety regulations, and the issue would get shelved until the next election cycle, ad nauseum.

20. Roads would be built directly between democrat voting strongholds.

    Instead of on ramps and access roads, in republican areas there would be sewage pipes under the highway with occasional outlets spewing untreated waste all over. Probably focused around schools, residences, healthcare facilities and food processing plants.

    CNN would paint the sewage outlets as a sustainable green system for delivering fertilizer and drinking water to underprivileged communities and when locals complain they would be berated for acting against their own self interests by trying to stop ecosystem revitalization and economic stimulus in their area.

    Anyone on reddit who made a negative comment about the system would be brigaded and reported for misinformation by people from the democratic areas who are sure they are lying because things are fine in the city where they live.

21. TRAINS