While transportation infrastructure has long elicited a
highly politicized debate in the US, particularly in regards to government
funding of alternative methods (Amtrak and rail, supporting the persistently
ailing airline industry), only in recent years have the discussions migrated
more heavily toward inadequacies in road and highway infrastructure. The collapse of the Interstate 35W
bridge in Minneapolis in August of 2007 helped stimulate the Federal Highway
Administration to probe into the quality, level of maintenance and fundamental
stability of some of the nation’s most heavily traveled bridges, while it
prompted the Minnesota Department of Transportation to increase the state fuel
tax mildly to fund bridge maintenance appropriately.
It may be premature for me to accuse Americans of prevailing
complacency in this matter, but obviously there is a far greater confidence
that the legislature always will do something about this, and the impact of
that decision is not going to cause widespread polarization among the
constituents. Compare the passage
of this bill to the results of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable
Care Act: everyone has been glued to their TVs! The “complacent” label may seem snide, but it was certainly
a word Minnesotans heard a fair amount in the summer of 2007, and it wasn’t
targeted at residents of that state: negligence and indifference toward
infrastructural needs was a nationwide problem back then, and it remains so
today. After MnDOT devised
alternative transportation routes during the reasonably fast paced (13 month)
reconstruction of the I-35W bridge, did we resume our blithe disregard? Was the loss of 13 lives during that
collapse simply not significant enough to confront the problem the same way we
have confronted the funding of health care?
Looking across the recent improvements in our highway
system, it’s hard to conclude that improvements in the Federal Interstate
Highway System operate under a consistent authority—most likely because they
don’t. I-65 as it runs through
Kentucky offers an excellent example.
As the image above indicates, this stretch of the 887-mile
highway weaves between Kentucky’s undulating hills and limestone beds. Just a few miles later further south,
the landscape is virtually unchanged.
Perhaps a little flatter, but not much different than
before. This is how most of
I-65 in Kentucky looks: with few exceptions, the interstate passes through overwhelmingly
rural countryside. Kentucky in
general is not a terribly urban state: only one metro, Louisville/Jefferson
County, ranks in the nation’s Top 50 for size, and only four cities (Louisville, Lexington,
Bowling Green, Owensboro) claim populations over 50,000. The state ranks 22nd inpopulation density,
but at 110 persons per square mile, it is less than a tenth as densely
populated as some of the crowded northeastern states such as New Jersey and
Rhode Island. While traffic
volumes for I-65 through Louisville are undoubtedly high at peak hours, the
only two other communities of reasonable size (populations over 15,000) with
exits along the I-65 stretch of Kentucky are Elizabethtown and Bowling
Green. These are the only communities
outside of metro Louisville along the interstate that offer a choice of
services (gas, food, lodging) beyond the bare minimum—quite a few of the
already sporadic exits along I-65 offer nothing at all.
In short, Kentucky is not a particularly crowded state. But most of its share of I-65 would
suggest otherwise. Through much of
the Midwest and South, six lanes is reserved for more urbanized areas. The only portions of I-65 in Indiana (a
state with nearly double Kentucky’s population density) that are more than four
lanes are the Indianapolis metro, NE Indiana around Gary and Merrillville, and
the Louisville suburbs in southern Indiana. Ohio, the tenth most densely populated state in the country,
also claims huge stretches of rural interstate highways that are only four
lanes wide. But in recent years,
Kentucky’s DOT has overseen the widening of nearly all of I-65, with the exception
of a 43-mile segment south of Elizabethtown and north of Bowling Green, and the
Governor articulates proposals for an upgrade there during the FY 2012 – FY
2018 Highway Plan. Before long, all of I-65 in Kentucky
will be at least six lanes wide.
Another noticeable feature is the superior lighting of I-65
in Kentucky across its exits.
Streetlights are numerous at the exit ramps, even if the
intersecting street does not host a great deal of services or traffic. In Indiana and Ohio, only the busiest
of rural intersections get streetlights, and their number often depends on the
traffic volumes: those with a variety of hotels and restaurants may have a
dozen streetlights, those with only one or two gas stations may have a half
dozen or less, and those that are the most rural will have none. Conversely, in Kentucky, virtually every
interchange on I-65 is now fully saturated with lights—urban or rural, and most
are still resolutely rural.
When passing near Bowling Green, where the exits are often
quite a bit busier, the streetlights are even more numerous.
Bowling Green is a moderately sized city of approximately 58,000
inhabitants. Cities of such a size
in either Ohio or Indiana are numerous, but in Kentucky, Bowling Green is the
third largest city. And between
its three primary exits off of I-65, the segments of interstate remain
consistently well-lit:
This stretch of highway deploys of stanchions in the median
of the interstate, planted firmly in the Jersey barriers at short intervals. Usually only larger metros of over
250,000 would integrate such a lighting technique, and exclusively when the
interstate passes directly through the most urbanized area. I-65 circumscribes the exurbs of
Bowling Green, yet motorists still get some big-city lighting. Indiana’s comparably sized
cities—Anderson, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Muncie—only get lighting at the major
exits. Granted, the respective
interstate does not pass directly through the hearts of those cities either,
but the lighting is nowhere near as sophisticated. Ohio shares the same condition as Indiana, with many lightly
traveled interchanges remaining completely unlit. Thus, Kentucky, despite being a significantly less densely
populated state, has invested in highway infrastructure at a level that far
surpasses that of its more urbanized neighbors to the north. I have no doubt that I-65 through Kentucky
receives a number of travelers passing through on this very important corridor
that connects Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. But the fact remains that Indiana and Ohio also can claim
significant trucking traffic in addition to their much larger population
bases. Both Indiana and Ohio,
because of their proximity to other large cities inside and outside of the two
states, have accommodated a significant ground logistical industry, suggesting
that, in aggregate, their interstate highway segments will remain much busier
than Kentucky’s for the foreseeable future, however well-used it may be.
This comparative observation by no means intends to
criticize the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s transportation spending decisions, nor
those of Indiana and Ohio. It
simply demonstrates the visible differences in states’ priorities. Kentucky’s Highway Plan includes the proposal for spending Road Fund revenues appropriated in each new two-year
period, which includes state and federal gasoline tax revenues. This has proven a highly volatile
source during the serious recession, due to reduced fuel consumption and
purchase of vehicles. The Federal
Highway Trust Fund has been particularly unstable, not only because of reduced consumer spending
but because Congress has not agreed on a suitable alternative to SAFETEA-LU
since it expired; the series of resolution/extensions disburse about 20% fewer
funds than before the act’s 2009 expiration.
Even if many fundamentals of a limited access highway
(design, safety parameters) remain more or less the same from state to state,
the “embellishments” will inevitably vary tremendously. At least for now, Kentucky has some of
the most luxurious interstates in terms of lane widths and lighting,
particularly in relation to the fact that so much of the state is sparsely
populated. By contrast, signage is
less developed in Kentucky than in other states: few—perhaps none—of the
overpasses in Kentucky have any indicator of what the name of the road is,
whereas in Indiana, most overpasses do.
And in Alabama, virtually every street has a particularly handsome sign:
These signs are relatively recently funded—probably
simultaneous with the highway widening in Kentucky—and they closely approximate
the Clearview font approved by the FHWA to phase out the older, splotchier
Highway Gothic. Notice this
example here, with the new font on the overpass and the old one to the right of
the road:
Alabama has the slickest signs I have seen among my own
recent road trips. And at this
point, Kentucky interstate driving is about as comfy as you can get: roads as
wide as you expect to see in Connecticut, but with a fraction of the population
density. Meanwhile, Ohio and
the Mid Atlantic states have invested much more heavily in protective fencing
to prevent injury when motorists on the overpass might throw objects out the
car so that they could hit people below.
Ohio has these fences on almost all overpasses; Indiana, Alabama, and
Tennessee have them on just a few; Kentucky has none. Will we ever see a consistency among the states in all of
the various infrastructural amenities?
I’m not holding my breath, and while I hate to end on a cynical note, it
is clear that some states are devoting greater amounts of money to bridge
maintenance than others—time will only tell where, amidst a decentralized
transportation funding system, the next Minneapolis will take place.
2 comments:
I agree with you for the most part. However, there are some dangerous stretches of I-65 in Kentucky through the mountains. Indiana has nothing like this. Actually, six laning I-65 in Indiana is on INDOT's long term wish list.
The last time I drove from Indy to Chicago I experienced rural congestion on I-65 in Indiana for the first time ever. Traffic that came to a dead stop with no construction or accident to cause it.
Thanks for your observation, Urbanophile. I felt like I was particularly wishy-washy in my conclusion here, but I'm glad to know I'm not alone in my sensitivity to road capacity issues. It does not surprise me that INDOT eventually plans to make I-65 six lane; it probably hopes to achieve the same with I-70 as well. It has been many years, but I did come to a dead stop somewhere just north of Lafayette on I-65, also with no discernable reason why.
Generally speaking, I'm not averse to each state approaching the design or presentation of roadside amenities differently. Accident prevention measures, though, probably need a central oversight, as I learned a couple years ago while driving I-40 in Arkansas west of Little Rock: lots of twists and turns through the mountains and not a single reflective dot on either the road verges or in the lane dividers. At night, in the rain, it was terrifying. I blogged about it a few years ago: http://dirtamericana.blogspot.com/2010/07/these-lumps-are-always-benign.html
Though I'm not expecting my blog post to have initiated change, hopefully Arkansas DOT has made improvements there through more local activism.
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