Three Kinds of Roads

by Tony Chavira

Towns were originally centered on something called “the square,” which historians consider the kind of place you and I would go for things we wanted or needed. Shops were there, you’d sell your goods there, and we might even socialize with one another there. It had such things as city halls, churches, schools, police stations, entertainment, food, pubs and restaurants placed together within a walkable area. It was everything the people in town needed, and it was all in one place.

Then, about a hundred years ago, the street car was introduced, and suddenly just one huge square seemed ludicrous. Why live within a quarter-mile vicinity of some crappy square when all you had to do was stroll down to a street car stop and be taken to a veritable wonderland of options. For alongside the street car’s invention came the invention of the corridor. Why limit yourself and the services you want to some quaint, outmoded town square when a limitless number of services, shops and social scenes gloriously bloomed from the street car’s multiple stops?

And when booming developments at each street car stop made it effortless for us to get around, our options seemed to have opened up completely. We had discovered a new way to get everything we needed, and all we had to do was hop into a charming street car and head to one of these dense, exciting corridor sectors we alluringly referred to as a “downtown.”

Yet, even the street car seemed limited when, after World War Two, the American middle class became so appallingly wealthy that it decided to completely open up its shopping, servicing and socializing options. No longer would we even be confined to street car stops that required (gasp!) 15 minute walks. We were far too savvy and cultured a nation with far too many specific needs to deal with all that abhorrent walking. Besides, cars were the most freeing, exciting way to navigate around town. And best of all, they’re symbols of wealth. What’s not to love?

Obviously, the more space the middle class's cars needed, the less political will went toward maintaining most street car systems, and eventually many faded away. In some places they were paved over with roads. In Los Angeles, they were replaced with highways and freeways. Our municipalities already owned the right-of-ways, and it was easy to build right over them (especially when the oil, tire and car industries had conspired to heavily lobby for it).

But with this rampant fervor for cars and driving space came a need for road rules. The Department of Motor Vehicles took care of the basic safety laws, but even they required infrastructure. You need to plant a few “Stop” signs before you can expect people to stop at them. There simply wasn't enough standardization, and many government administrative types considered road organization a national problem. Until then, most roads were meant for street cars, carriages or walking, so there was no need for rules related to traffic volume or travel speeds.

The more people used cars, the more imperative that these kinds of rules be nailed down. Otherwise, huge trucks would be squeezing down tiny streets with no sidewalks, or homes would be built right to the curb. So beginning just before President Eisenhower’s National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, federal and local governments began hiring traffic engineers, whose job it was to figure out how roads could accommodate cars.

Once the Act took full effect, it became clear that the word road didn’t mean the same thing across state lines. And neither did avenue, boulevard, street or lane. Some places had technical definitions for these words, while others simply named their streets with them. Similarly, some highways were numbered, while others were named. From the point of view of a traffic engineer, dutifully involved in making the nation easier for the driver and his car, the United States was a mishmashed mess of motorway madness that could benefit from some good ol’ American process standardization.

And so the actual crowning engineering marvel of Eisenhower’s national highway investment was the standardization of road terms (which was far less expensive than building the national highway system). Sure, they were one-size-fits-all, but they were clear, and Americans got back to work on big-time infrastructure investment. Even today the Obama administration makes reference to the virtue of getting Americans back to work building our bridges and roads.

Now, only 60 years later, we’ve figured out that it’s a bad idea. What was the point of building roads for cars? The objectives of traffic engineers were and are based on enhancing the mobility and safety of automobile travel; walking, biking, running, busing and whatever-elseing be damned. When all that matters is quickly getting your car from Point A to Point B, what's left for the pedestrian?

Where there were once lanes, tracks, streets, alleys, avenues, boulevards, concourses, paths and many other names for what we’d use to get through our communities, now there are only three: local streets (like the ones most homes sit on), collector roads, and arterials, (highway-like roads that aren’t highways). And, of course, highways/freeways (which have different rules).

This leap toward efficiency eliminated the need for streets to do anything except move cars, and if streets needed to expand at the detriment of homes, so be it. If sidewalks needed to be eliminated, oh well. If a road needed to move through a pristine area in order to connect two parts of the city, you do what you’ve gotta do. Just consider the beating Sepulveda Pass has taken since we’ve started expanding the 405 freeway. That, my friends, is American traffic efficiency at work.

This road standardization also brought on less obvious changes. Turns need to be wider, which makes it harder for walkers. From the point of view of an engineer, stop signs and square corners are inefficient. Pesky trees, sidewalk cafes, bicyclists and pedestrians are obstacles. By eliminating these complications, automobile traffic can flow in so zen-like a state of ultimate perfection that urban planners decided it would be in everyone’s best interest to incorporate the ideas into building and planning codes.

Now the House of Representatives Transportation Committee is looking to implement a six-year, $210 billion dollar investment strategy in roads, highways and bridges. It may only take $1 million of that money to completely reexamine the fundamental codes and policies that locked us into sad little suburban developments, and would be more beneficial to the United States than an infinite number of construction dollars. But take a guess if that’s any part of the Transportation Committee’s budget.

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