this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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Doubt all you want, it's a free country afterall.
Some (just some) of the information I've seen on this indicates that the freeways built in North America are massively over built for the use case. The amount of underlying structure and support for the roads is not necessary and just serves to add costs with no tangible benefit to automotive travel to those that drive on it.
The only good reason to be so over built is so that the roadway can be used for something that isn't civilian traffic.... Like the road being used as a landing strip, or to support tanks and other heavy equipment rolling overtop without entirely annihilating the road.
But hey, you do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. I'm not telling you anything as fact here, just relaying what I've heard, and what, in my opinion, is true. But that's just like.... My opinion man.
That's the thing. I've looked into it, not super extensively honestly, but never found any project specification that included clauses or numbers about military use. Further, the infrastructure isn't overbuilt for the purpose, which is road transport of cargo. Trucks threaten to overburden the Interstate highways, which is why we have weight limits, and weigh stations to enforce them. Also, all.of the military vehicles I've seen on the highway are still just vehicles, modified from civilian models; even the tanks are not so.massive that they can't transport them on a typical flatbed trailer. The last thing that makes me doubt the military-use justification is that it's a double-edged sword: Our military can use them.to rapidly deploy forces, but invaders could also use them just as effectively, and to rapidly advance into the heart of our cities.
Eisenhower is called the father of the Interstate Highway, and he saw the need for economic reasons. The cost of construction was the primary fight, and "Defense" got added to the title of the bill authorizing it so they could justify spending some defense funds, but that looks awfully perfunctory, being added later.
Fair enough. I'm happy to have contending viewpoints on the matter and civil discussion about it. You've given me a lot to think about and more research to do, and I appreciate that.
I don't know that I'll remember to come back and comment here when I've done all that, so in the event I forget, I hope you have an excellent day/week/month/year/life.
Thanks for the note. I just wanted to stop back and say that I appreciate it. It's not my intent to win an argument, and I was thinking about leaving Reddit before the API fiasco because it seemed like it has a culture of combat-by-verbiage. My username is an old, nautical version of shooting the breeze, or chewing the fat, talking just for the pleasure of talking. That's what I was going for here, and mission accomplished.
You're missing the "privatized railways" and "trains need more grading" components.
Businesses need to ship cargo. However the private railroads road block attempts at public freight rail (which is massively more efficient) so the demand from businesses is to run truck traffic over highways which is where like 99.9% of road wear comes from.
Private railways also have no incentive to expand service (it costs a lot to properly grade for freight and they have regional monopolies. )