BOB2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sgt. Joe Friday Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Further reading here:
> >
> [enotrans.org]
>
> > cy-under-president-eisenhower/
>
> A nice find... As usual with any product of the
> Eno Foundation, a well researched and documented
> paper on the Federal policies of the mid to late
> 1950's.
>
> I don't agree with FUD in charaterizing Ike as
> somehow "anti-rail". I think, that given
> Eisenhower's experiences as a logistics and
> planning officer of the first caliber (as amply
> revealed by subsequent events...)w ith his truck
> convoy test of crossing the United States, right
> after WWI, and with his experiences with the road
> systems and railways of Europe in WWII, that Ike
> was definitely a "pro highway" man of "his
> times"...
>
> Times change... And real events, and reactions to
> real events, in our control, or out of our
> control, wise, or unwise will cause even more
> often unanticipated changes, and often unintended
> consequences, sometimes for good, sometimes not,
> many times some bizarre of even contradictory
> combinations of both... Until Doc fixes the flus
> capacitor, you can't change or "fix" what has
> happened in the past, only what lies ahead...
> This paper is a great example of how our political
> system sometimes has failed to respond, and make
> prudent reforms, even when the need is obvious,
> and the resulting damage is predictable, and/or
> preventable...
>
>
>
> .

Yeah, was more interpretation of the urban legend of his seeing the autobahnen and thinking of how that would be a Good Thing to have for defense transportation in the US, avoiding use of railroads. Coupled with some issues when dealing with railroads. It's actually not an uncommon interpretation, but that and other Eno papers, plus US DOT's historical papers (not unbiased of course...) provide logical reasons and ties to ongoing policies that are probably more relevant.

Interstates or something like them were going to happen after WW2, regardless of who was in charge, but might have happened on a different schedule with different details, without Ike and his Congress. In any case, by that point in time (1950s) rail traffic was already declining, and passenger traffic collapsing, as everybody who could was buying a car, trucks were noticeably taking formerly-rail freight traffic that wasn't too bulky (and doing last-mile for nearly everything not used in industrial quantities, of course), and air travel was starting to pick up too (though the latter didn't really explode until the 1960s with widespread use of jets).

Funny, I vaguely recall (as a small child) going to the 1950s grand opening of the big new SFO. Lots of tours of things like Stratocruisers (with Pullman-like sections for sleeping on long flights!) and Constellations and DC3s. (Not so great) food in a restaurant on the top floor of the terminal, right below that signature square control tower, looking out over the tarmac, with lighting so dim you couldn't see your food. All of that is long gone, replaced at least twice as terminals were rebuilt and expanded. Probably would have collapsed in the 1989 quake if the building were still there.