Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway

A road book. No, not a travelogue type road book, a policy wonk type road book. The beginnings of the current iteration of I-69 date to 1991. It's often called the NAFTA highway- it proposes to connect southern Texas to Indianapolis. From there it will use the existing I-69 on to Canada. The world that existed when the Interstate system was built out from the 1950s through the 1970s is long gone. The money is gone. The fast-track system is gone. The political will for new big highways is gone.

Interstate 69 covers the endless rounds of meetings by states, counties, cities, feds, advocacy groups, opposition groups, special interest groups, and politicos involved in the last two decades of trying to get I-69 built. Several people have devoted a huge chunk of their life to this highway. Some of them died along the way. As of today only stretches of the highway are built here and there along the proposed route. Some of them are less than two miles long. Completion dates are estimated from never to twenty more years.

The Highway trust fund is basically broke. There's not even enough money there to maintain what is already built. Hard choices will have to be made in the future regarding funding of new highways in the US. Higher taxes (almost a non-starter), toll roads, or mileage fees. Everyone wants freeways but very few want to pay for them.

Australia mandated private retirement accounts a few years ago. They need investments that are stable and pay out for decades. Along with Spain, they view US transportation as a area that fits these criteria. Decades long contracts with little risk. They have been involved in bidding of privatization of some toll systems- Chicago, Northern Indiana. This sends the conspiracy theorists into high gear and gives rise to some paranoid conclusions that are quite daft. All in all, this book covers the current climate of national roads in the US- a micro-system few of us ever delve into. ( )