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The Apple, the Cat and the Barometer |
The Freeway to Prosperity Suppose
this year the tomato crop turns out miserable. Suppose I am a farmer who had
a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. What does that mean? Does it mean I am going
to get rich quick? Maybe, but there is a catch. I have to get the tomatoes to
markets far and wide, quickly. As long as the tomatoes sit on the vines, they
are worth nothing. When they get to the supermarkets in the big cities far
away, still fresh, they are worth a lot. Getting
things to market is the backbone of transportation. In the case of my
tomatoes, I have several choices. I can have them shipped by truck, or by
rail, or by air or by boat. Air transport is the fastest, but by far the most
expensive. That makes it not a good choice for tomatoes. Water transport can
be the cheapest, but depends on a natural waterway connecting my farm to the
markets of interest. For most people waterways are not viable. Rail and road
are the real competitors for tomato transport, even though they are tuned for
different shipment types. Transportation
is one of the most important infrastructures for economic gains and
productivity. Business is based in movement. Movement of people, goods,
services, information and money quickly, over large distances is crucial to a
vibrant economy. Money and information and some services can be moved via the
digital cyberways, the rest needs actual physical motion, by air, road, water
or rails. Henry
Ford sparked the revolution in transportation, in 1913. The Ford Motor
Company Ford started rolling off mass produced automobiles from an “assembly
line”. These autos were targeted to the middle class and were priced
attractively. As the population of cars and subsequently trucks on the
American roads skyrocketed, the country faced the problem of managing
traffic. Roads that were built for horse-drawn buggies had to be widened.
Then came the idea of the “limited access highway” meant for cars only where
travel was possible without stopping. In
the late 1930’s the US grappled with an idea of building transcontinental
superhighways. There were successful regional highways in the US and Germany.
However a nationwide interconnected system did not exist. Franklin D. Roosevelt liked the idea and
found it appealing for many reasons, including economics. However, World War
II derailed the prospects temporarily. In 1944 the matter resurfaced and a
nationwide plan was approved, but money was not available. Finally in 1956
under Dwight Eisenhower, work started on the massive plan of spending $1.1
billion on a network of 40,000 miles of highway from coast to coast to coast. Today,
the US highway system, or the “freeways” as it is commonly called is quite
similar to the original concept. The freeway consists of two separate roads,
one for each direction of traffic. Each of these roads has about two to three
well marked lanes. Since there are no intersections, no traffic lights and no
stopping, the freeway is essentially uncrossable. The entire thing is
designed to keep cars moving safely at over 80 mph (128 kmph). The legal
speed limits on freeways range from 55 mph to 65 mph (rarely 75mph) but cars
regularly travel between 70 and 80 mph. Freeways
have “interchanges” where they meet other roadways and traffic needs to get
off and on the freeway into other streets. Roads that intersect the freeway
pass over or under the freeway using bridges. An interchange with a regular
road can be as simple, as four ramps leading on and off the freeway, or as
complex as eight ramps for handling separate directions. Traffic entering the
freeway uses an entrance ramp that merges into the roadway from the right.
Traffic leaving the freeway use exit ramps. A freeway meeting a freeway
results in a more complex ramp pattern, often called the “cloverleaf”. A
cloverleaf allows a car from traveling in any direction, on one freeway to
switch over to any direction on the other freeway without crossing any
roadway. The
freeway interchanges get very complex and somewhat spectacular when multiple
colossal freeways come together. A common scenario is three freeways, each
carrying four lanes of traffic in each direction, meeting at a point. The
“interchange” at the location must allow for cars traveling in any direction
on any freeway to change over to any direction on another freeway without
slowing down. Hence a 3-freeway intersection necessitates 12
interconnections, snaking in and over the roadways at various levels. It is a
3-dimensional masterpiece of engineering and concrete. Today
the freeway system in the US makes it theoretically possible to drive from
any city to another without stopping and without making much of a detour. It
meanders and meshes through the entire country. Small towns on the freeway routes
provide services to travelers. At cities, a circular freeway rings the city,
and spokes lead to the central area. In some cities the freeways go
underground, to cross under rivers and channels to avoid interfering with
shipping traffic. Traffic is incessant at all times of the day or night. Rush
hour traffic is when the rush causes the freeways to resemble parking lots. Road
transport has many advantages over its other competitors the railways and the
airways. Road transport is essentially door-to-door. A vehicle can load
passengers and cargo at a house, office or warehouse and carry them without
any unloading to the destination. An individual can drive the vehicle at his
or her pace, scheduling the transportation at will or whim. The same roadway carries
tiny econoboxes, or heavy-duty tractor-trailers. Commercial traffic and
personal traffic intermixes and traverses from source to destination at high
rates of speed. A
study by a pro-freeway group claims massive benefits of the US highway system
to the overall well-being and quality of life in the country over the past 40
years. They study says, the highway system has benefited and enriched
virtually everyone living in the US. Due to the efficient and safe transport
medium is provides, an estimated 187,000 lives and 12 million injuries has
been avoided. For every $1 put into the construction and maintenance of the
system, the economy has reaped $6 in productivity gains. The system has been
instrumental in escalating America’s international competitiveness, played a
part in national security. The greatest benefit of all is that it provides
easy access to personal transportation for all the residents of the nation. The
dependence on personal transport also extracts a severe price from society in
terms of accidents. In less than two months, in the United States, more
people die from traffic fatalities than all the people who died in the World
Trade Tower terrorist tragedy. At the rate of about 40,000 dead and 3 million
injured per year, it is a shameful national disaster. In spite of enormous
strides in roadway safety, car safety, curbs on intoxicated driving and
constant media pounding on the dangers of driving, the number of deaths has
not declined significantly. Part
of the success story of personal and commercial transportation in the US is
due to the low price of fuel. The average price of gasoline is about $1.50
per gallon. Gasoline prices are about the same all over the world, but the
price paid at the pump depends upon the taxes imposed by the government. In
some part of the world gasoline is not taxed, and sells for about
$0.50/gallon (Venezuela and Indonesia). The highest price of gasoline is in
the United Kingdom, at over $5/gallon. Most western European countries try to
limit consumption through taxes and the price varies around $3 to $4/gallon.
(Gasoline prices in India are about average, at about $2.50/gallon). As
freeways become prolific, there are plans to make them even more efficient.
The major problem with freeways is that traffic comes to a crawl when the
number of cars on them increases beyond a point. Then the freeway becomes
counter-productive, as the number of cars that pass through it actually
decreases as traffic rises. Technological solutions have been proposed as
some are being harnessed today. Sensors on the freeway judge the traffic
volume and speed at regular intervals. Stop lights on the entrance ramps
control the inflow of cars, to control the volume and to make the flow keep
going smoothly. Futuristic plans include cars that drive by themselves guided
by instruments buried under the roads, and maintaining inter-car separation
using radar. Road
transportation via “superhighways” as they are known outside the US (the
preferred term in the US is freeway) is vital to a country’s economic might.
Today, all countries in Western Europe have prolific networks of freeways.
They are however not so common in Eastern Europe, which is in the process of
building them. The Pacific Rim nations also have good networks, or are in the
process of building them. The freeways have come under attack by many
urban development pundits who claim they are a source of pollution and
accidents. Transport needs are better solved by railways rather then big ugly
concrete superhighways. The reality however tells quite a different story. Partha Dasgupta is on the faculty of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Arizona State University in Tempe. His specializations are in the areas of Operating Systems, Cryptography and Networking. His homepage is at http://cactus.eas.asu.edu/partha |