Fixpert

The Interstate Highway Act in 1956 “paved the way” to our modern highway system as we know it (ha ha). With paved roads running state to state, I imagine that Americans at the time felt that the country had decreased in size — suddenly, a short day trip to another state was feasible.

See, I do a lot of thinking about transportation, American culture, cars, bikes, oil, pollution, obesity, etc. I am a big bike enthusiast, and applaud anyone who has made the extra effort to leave their car in the driveway and hit the road pushing pedals instead. I realize that this is not always possible or reasonable to expect from everyone. Not everything is bikeable, or walkable. And unfortunately, America is not known for having a great mass transit system. I think part of the problem is that this country is physically huge. Have you ever tried to drive across America? I have, it takes friggin’ forever! Like 5 or 6 days, and that’s putting in a solid 8+ hours of driving a day at top (legal) speeds. I’ve also tried biking across America — well technically I biked top to bottom, Maine to Miami — and that takes friggin’ forever too! Three weeks at a break-neck pace of 100 miles a day.

Having taken these trips, I feel like I’m in a good position to comment on the size of this country. It is ginormous, and there’s a lot of nothing in between the coasts. I think it’s beautiful in the middle there, but seriously, there are places where I think you could die if your car broke down because you’re hundreds of miles from humanity.

Back to my point, this country is huge, but being able to travel quickly in cars using interstates made it feel smaller. Here’s the rub: in certain areas of America, the population has become so dense, that cars are no longer effective and it actually takes you longer to get to your destination by car. I was in LA recently (the inspiration for this post) and it took me 1.5 hrs to travel 14 miles. I could have easily biked that distance in less than an hour. When I was working as a bike messenger, I would repeatedly catch back up to the cars that just passed me that were held up at the red light ahead. Cars just don’t fair well in stop and go city traffic. The incredible shrinking country feels like it’s plumping up in size again now that we’re all stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, we’re all plumping up too.