Were urban freeway designers in the 1950s and 1960s stupid?

[sparker]

Cobbling up a response to the OP -- they weren't particularly stupid, per se, but they were still near the bottom of the learning curve regarding the methodologies of deploying freeways through existing developed areas, all the while attempting to satisfy (or placate) the various parties involved (often reluctantly at best) in the venture.  There will always be a "hindsight" controversy swirling around whether urban freeways should have been developed at all; but those that were tasked to do just that had a very tough row to hoe, so to speak.  The "flight" of the consumer class out of the cities in the '50's and early '60's resulted in extensive plans to expedite the continuation of their spending habits within the city centers -- and that invariably meant freeways to convey them back and forth from their new suburban homes to those urban cores; just look at the original Interstate "Yellow Book" to see just how extensive those projected networks were.  Confronted with not only reluctant folks in the way of the freeways but with the expense of purchasing their properties (a principal reason that less prosperous neighborhoods were selected for the various routes), narrower-than-optimal ROW's were often deployed to simply reduce conflict as much as possible while saving dollars.  With Interstates, the issue was not the 90% federal funds but the remaining 10%, which had to be raised within the various states -- and with the original 16-year funding timeline -- later extended -- staring the DOT's in the face, so there could hardly be any let-up in the process.   So such things as shortened exit and entrance lengths, the use of LH egress, and squeezing lanes into narrow carriageways -- and regularly seeking waivers from published standards -- became commonplace.  And when, especially on the East Coast, parallel/redundant facilities were being deleted from the system after the pushback starting in the mid-60's -- those existing freeways that were developed prior to that pushback were required to handle traffic loads for which their design standards were inadequate.   Thus began the "piling on" of criticism regarding those corridors -- sociopolitically impossible to upgrade/expand -- all while seeing their traffic loads increase over time.   But the plain truth is that the aggregate freeway mileage -- actually developed or not -- was largely the product of political pressure emanating from the cities themselves from those who exercised influence and power at the time!-- and their goal was to ensure the cities' economic survival by providing egress to regional residents with resources extending to car ownership and use.   Of course, eventually that goal was increasingly thwarted by the deployment of suburban shopping malls, often located adjacent to beltways or outer bypasses -- but that prospect wasn't even on the horizon (at least outside of CA) in the mid-'50's when the Interstate network was in its formative stages and state DOT's were busy planning additional freeways to address those areas not served by the I-network. 

The upshot is that state DOT planners and facility designers were really limited in their options -- and did what they thought would get the job done with minimal fuss & bother -- and physical limitations were part & parcel of that methodology.   

[froggie]

Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation.  We have over 60 years of it now.

[Beltway]

With Interstates, the issue was not the 90% federal funds but the remaining 10%, which had to be raised within the various states -- and with the original 16-year funding timeline -- later extended -- staring the DOT's in the face, so there could hardly be any let-up in the process.   

13 years originally, 1956 to 1969.  With the unforeseen cost inflation there were shortfalls in the revenue for the federal share as well.

Still a very rapid process.  By 1970 the overall system was 70% completed mileagewise, but the urban and metropolitan portion was only 55% complete.

Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation.  We have over 60 years of it now.

Trucks were considerably smaller back then and cars and their tires were not yet attuned to continuous travel at freeway speeds.  The turnpikes built in the 1950s started building that experience but even that was in mostly rural areas and in a small part of the country.

[hbelkins]

Sorry I'm not clear - by Texas Turndowns, are you referring to the advance U-Turn lanes at freeway ramp/surface street intersections  for frontage road traffic?

No; those are generally called crossovers, not just in Texas.  The Texas turndown was much as Jjakucyk describes.  It entered into use in the 1960's when unprotected guardrail ends were recognized as a spearing hazard, but the launching problem was recognized around 1977 and the 1990's saw concerted efforts to improve guardrail terminal design.

Also called "Texas Twist."

[J3ebrules]

Admittedly, I didn't read all the comments in this thread, but I would literally sit and ponder this every single day while sitting stuck in a two-lane bottleneck on the Schuykill Expressway through Philly...


Daydreamed about going off on those engineers quite a bit...

[US71]

Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation.  We have over 60 years of it now.

The same could be said for freeway signage and guardrails.

[Rothman]

I don't know.  Guiderail is a funny situation because it has been more about consideration of benefits vs. costs than just benefits, if you believe those that say cable was actually the best at stopping vehicles...but then you had to repair it after the big hit.

[kkt]

Cars could not accelerate as fast as they can now, couldn't brake as fast, and were much less safe in accidents.  Prevailing speeds were lower.  Trucks were much smaller.  They designers figured people would be so overjoyed by the opportunity to drive 45 mph through the city without stopping that they wouldn't try to push for 65.  So, they'd offer a lot of compromises with the cities:  narrower ROW, shorter merging lanes, sharper curves.  Also as has been noted previously that kept the cost down.

[noelbotevera]

Call this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?

I know nobody could predict say, the 1973 oil crisis, and I know that freeways in general were a novel concept (after all, they had already been 20 years old by the time of the Interstate system, and still underdeveloped) but I'm sure that a brief glance at history shows that cars in the '50s were faster than the cars of the '20s.

The only city that I could think of that did futureproof their roads was Dallas, with its major arterial already being constructed in the '50s and '60s with 8 lanes to start out with. I don't think that section has changed aside from repaving - it's possible those lanes are their original width.

[roadman65]

My dad did say that when the engineers thought of the Garden State Parkway, they did build the Raritan River Bridge as four lanes, but built the piers for the later day expansions that took place as they did anticipate growth at the time.

Even the original free section from Exit 129 to 140 they built all the overpasses with six lanes in mind as when the 1980 widening took place all the Moses stone arch bridges remained. Only at New Dover Road and Inman Avenue in Woodbridge Township did they have to lower the freeway as those stone arch overpasses had a more round configuration over the ones at Madison Hill Road, Westfield Avenue, Raritan Road, and Centennial Avenue further north that have an arch but straightens out on the sides.  Also the underpasses at Lake Avenue, the 135 former Circle underpasses, and Walnut Avenue never needed widening.    Plus all the Iselin overpasses and US 1 underpass all are as wide now as when they were built in 1948. 

There are others including the tunnel under Downtown Irvington is never been widened underneath and that has had two lanes added since and that was built after the Union County and Middlesex County parts.

[Beltway]

Call this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?

It is not just the speeds, but being able to maintain a highway speed for hour after hour without stopping, that is what was a new phenomenon, and auto designs of the 1940s did not take that into account, and the rate of breakdowns was high, until mechanical and tire technologies improved based on those needs. Engines, radiators, oil systems, transmissions, etc.

[J N Winkler]

Call this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?

It was, and in some cases it was done.  The German Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933.  In both the US and the UK, designers had had an opportunity to observe the phenomenon of design creep during the interwar years (e.g., in the US the standard unit lane width for interurban highways went from 9 ft in 1918 to 12 ft in 1940, and there were corresponding changes in sideslope design, ditch profiles, etc.).  This experience, in combination with practice in Germany and the Netherlands, informed adoption of initial design standards that had a fair amount of futureproofing baked in.  Much stricter design criteria were also used for select facilities, such as the New Jersey Turnpike.

As a result, some very early freeways like the Santa Ana Freeway in Los Angeles function acceptably with modern traffic (aside from being almost perpetually congested), though they are noticeably not as up-to-date as freeways built from the late 1960's onward when geometric design standards essentially became fixed.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway is more an exception that proves the rule than an example of failure to futureproof.  It was a compromised design from the start because it runs through parkland and was designed to follow a river channel.  It opened at almost the same time as the Cahuenga Pass freeway, eventually part of the Hollywood Freeway, which was much closer to modern standards in its design.

I know nobody could predict say, the 1973 oil crisis, and I know that freeways in general were a novel concept (after all, they had already been 20 years old by the time of the Interstate system, and still underdeveloped) but I'm sure that a brief glance at history shows that cars in the '50s were faster than the cars of the '20s.

Cars even of the mid-1930's were noticeably faster than cars of the 1920's--for example, the Ford V8 came out in 1932.

The question is not whether to futureproof at all so much as it is what operating speed to adopt as a target for segments of the network where the only practical constraint on speed will be the geometric design, taking into account the fact that building a significant share of your ultimate network to a given speed "locks you in" and makes it economically problematic to move to a higher speed for the rest.

Why 70-80 MPH, which is the consensus choice of the world at large, and not, say, 160 MPH?  I think the ultimate explanation lies in subtle human factors constraints that make it difficult to build highways such that the masses can operate their own cars on them safely at speeds well above 100 MPH.  In the railroad world, 78 MPH is the breakpoint for more stringent requirements for protecting the right-of-way (at least in the US).  High-speed rail involves a higher caliber of infrastructure provision and train operation has a significant drive-by-wire element.

The 1973 oil crisis did provoke a study by FHWA to evaluate the possibility of lowering highway design speeds.  It appeared facially excessive to design for 70 MPH when the double-nickel speed limit looked like it was here to stay.  However, FHWA concluded that the higher design speeds were worth keeping not only for consistency with older facilities already built to 70 but also for the improved margin of safety.  The savings from designing to a lower speed were also minimal, aside from highly constrained environments such as mountains or dense urban areas where lower design speeds had already been allowed for decades.

[Beltway]

The German Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933. 

Why in the world would they do that?  The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.

They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.

The 1973 oil crisis did provoke a study by FHWA to evaluate the possibility of lowering highway design speeds.

The rural Interstate mileage was 80% complete by then, and most of the rest had been designed at least in basic alignment, and that would have had a lot to do with not lowering the remainder.

[TEG24601]

Don't forget the miles of elevated freeway, with hundreds of matchstick supports.  I'm just waiting for someone to realize that most of I-5 through downtown Seattle and South isn't stable because of the elevated nature, and they have to replace it.  It will make 85/20 look like a cakewalk.


When properly designed I don't see any problem with left entrance/exits, it is when they aren't properly designed, don't have extended acceleration lanes, or high-volume exits a short distance on the right, that you really run into problems.

[J N Winkler]

The German Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933.

Why in the world would they do that?  The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.

They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.

A key forerunner of the Autobahnen was the AVUS motor racetrack in the Grunewald near Berlin, which was later integrated into the system as part of the A115.  There was an expectation from the start that the system should be able to accommodate high-performance vehicles to allow the realization of time savings in interurban automobile travel that were not possible on the existing road network owing to geometric limitations, even if the bulk of the vehicle fleet was not yet capable of such speeds.

The Germans built the roads before the vehicles partly as what we now call Keynesian stimulus.  The vision back in 1933 was to achieve mass motorization with the "People's Car"--i.e., the Volkswagen; what we now know as the Bug was prototyped shortly before World War II started.

[Beltway]

Why in the world would they do that?  The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.
They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.

A key forerunner of the Autobahnen was the AVUS motor racetrack in the Grunewald near Berlin, which was later integrated into the system as part of the A115.  There was an expectation from the start that the system should be able to accommodate high-performance vehicles to allow the realization of time savings in interurban automobile travel that were not possible on the existing road network owing to geometric limitations, even if the bulk of the vehicle fleet was not yet capable of such speeds.
The Germans built the roads before the vehicles partly as what we now call Keynesian stimulus.  The vision back in 1933 was to achieve mass motorization with the "People's Car"--i.e., the Volkswagen; what we now know as the Bug was prototyped shortly before World War II started.

That sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.

The 1930s autobahns were really little more than a boondoggle inspired by the demonized --

"Hitler's autobahn construction began in September 1933 under the direction of chief engineer Fritz Todt.  The 14-mile expressway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, which opened on May 19, 1935, was the first section completed under Hitler.  By December 1941, when wartime needs brought construction to a halt, Germany had completed 2,400 miles (3,860 km), with another 1,550 miles (2,500 km) under construction.
As many American visitors had noted during the 1930's, the autobahn was built before the country had enough motor vehicles to justify the expense.  Only the well off or powerful in Germany could afford automobiles. "

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/reichs.cfm

[J N Winkler]

That sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.

It is not an urban legend.  The Wikipedia article on Volkswagen has a section addressing its founding within the context of an effort to democratize motoring.  Besides the references cited in the Wikipedia article, there is some discussion in Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler.

In any case, you asked why the Germans should design to such high speeds when vehicles capable of them represented such a small share of the German vehicle fleet.  The FHWA history page you linked to and partly quoted notes (correctly) that the Autobahnen were an elite-led project, and the elite had cars that could run for hours and hours at high speed.  Leslie Burgin, the British Minister of Transport who toured the Autobahnen in the winter of 1937-38, travelled between Munich and Berlin by car, partly on recently built segments of Autobahn, in this way.  (When he returned to Britain, he felt obliged to endorse a motorway plan to meet the technological challenge.  It was not progressed at the time because rearmament was deemed a higher priority, but it influenced the development of the postwar "tea room plan.")

[Beltway]

That sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.

It is not an urban legend.  The Wikipedia article on Volkswagen has a section addressing its founding within the context of an effort to democratize motoring.  Besides the references cited in the Wikipedia article, there is some discussion in Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler.

Take Wikipedia for what you will.  The Richard Weingroff (FHWA historian) article said that the VW project didn't start producing until 1939, and most of the autobahns were built by then.

In any case, you asked why the Germans should design to such high speeds when vehicles capable of them represented such a small share of the German vehicle fleet.  The FHWA history page you linked to and partly quoted notes (correctly) that the Autobahnen were an elite-led project, and the elite had cars that could run for hours and hours at high speed.

So?  They are not going to build 2,500 miles of freeways for a trickle of high-speed cars when nothing of the sort had ever been built before.

Like I said, this project was part of the deluded and sick mind of Hitler.

[vdeane]

https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981

[Beltway]

https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981

Not all by himself, but he certainly had a major directive role in allocating funds for the bulk of the 1930s construction, as Richard Weingroff (FHWA historian) pointed out in his article.

[hbelkins]

So, is someone going to declare Godwin's Law and call this thread finished?

[Beltway]

So, is someone going to declare Godwin's Law and call this thread finished?

No need.  He was the chief executive of Germany from 1933 onward, and made executive decisions about national infrastructure projects.

[mgk920]

As for the OP's topic, I'd say that the correct word is 'inexperienced', not 'stupid'.

Mike

[Finrod]

This thread reminds me of the mass of right exit ramps and left entrance ramps on the Kennedy Expressway (I-90-94) just north of the Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) near downtown Chicago.  It blew my mind seeing that for the first time.