Nips and Tucks

Author Earl Swift has written a book that charts the creation of the U.S. highway expressway system (The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailbrazers Who Created the American Superhighways (2011)).

The book is reviewed in The New York Times Book Review this Sunday by author Tom Vanderbilt (author of the great book Traffic).  Vanderbilt writes the following at the close of his review:

"In the end, the view ahead is not as bright as that in the rearview; where congested roads would once be treated with the short-term inoculation of more lanes, a state highway official says, "We don't have enough money for that approach anymore."  Cities now look to tear down urban highways, not build new ones.  The road of "the future," as first envisioned in 1912 and brought to fruition decades later, is carrying the usual strains of middle age; the nips and tucks are giving way to full reconstructive surgery, all paid for with a series of maxed-out credit cards (the federal fuel tax hasn't been raised, even to keep pace with inflation, since 1993, and has been increasingly eroded by improvements in fuel economy).  The future, it seems, is getting aways from us, even as we keep asking, with a plaintive cry from the back seat: "Are we there yet?"