Roads and Highways

Roads and Highways:
How the Northeast and Midwest Fits into the National Picture

There are 4 million miles of public roads in the United States. Laid end-to-end, they would circle the globe more than 157 times, or go to the moon and back more than 8 times.

The Interstate Highway System accounts for only 1 percent of all highway mileage, but carries 25 percent of the total vehicle miles of travel. The longest highway in the Interstate System is I-90, whose 3,085 miles stretch from Seattle to Boston. The shortest is I-97; its 18 miles connect Baltimore and Maryland's capital city, Annapolis.

In 1999, 3,800 miles of urban interstate highways carried more than 100,000 vehicles a day while 15,000 miles of rural interstate highways carried more than 20,000 cars a day. The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, signed into law on June 9, 1998, authorized $23.8 billion for interstate maintenance and $28.6 billion for the 163,000-mile National Highway System, which includes the Interstate Highway System, through 2003.

There are 4,788 miles of toll roads, bridges and tunnels in the United States. Of the nearly 600,000 bridges on all roads nationwide, about 29 percent were found to be structurally or functionally deficient in 1999.

In 1997, total vehicle miles traveled by automobiles in Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and the United Kingdom combined equaled 1.6 trillion. In that same year, total vehicle miles traveled by automobiles alone in the US were 1.4 trillion. U.S. households spend, on average, 19 percent of their income on transportation -- less than housing but more than food.

Bearing in mind that the Northeast and Midwest region is heavily urbanized, it is important to remember that, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report, drivers in the 68 largest urban areas experienced an increase in delays from traffic congestion from 11 per year in 1982, to 36 per year in 1999. The estimate cost of traffic congestion in these 68 areas totaled $78 billion, representing a cost of 4.5 million extra hours of travel and 6.8 billion gallons of fuel wasted while sitting in traffic. The average rush hour trip takes 32 percent more time than the same trip taken during non-rush-hour conditions. Congested travel periods (rush hours) in the nation's major cities have doubled in less than 20 years, increasing from nearly three hours (morning and evening combined) in 1982, to almost six hours in 1999. Congestion is now found during almost half of the daylight hours on workdays.

Region	Miles Travelled	Percent of US Total	Per-Capita Miles Travelled	Percent of Per-Capita Miles Travelled
Northeast	474,646	17.6	8,218	83
Midwest	511,074	19.0	9,812	99
NE and MW	985,720	36.6	8,794	91
South	996,577	37.0	11,007	112
West	709,038	26.3	9,806	106
South and West	1,705,615	63.4	10,474	106
TOTAL	2,691,335	100.0	9,870	100

Putting this in the context of the above table: in the Northeast and Midwest states, people are driving less miles. The Northeast-Midwest region has 21 of the 68 largest urban areas in the country; however, their inhabitants constitute almost 50 percent of the total population of those 68 areas. In the Northeast and Midwest, drivers cover smaller distances than in other areas, but are wasting more time and fuel, at a terrible cost to the quality of life in the region.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, car pooling to work declined from about 15 percent of commuters in the mid 1970s to 10 percent in the mid 1990s. In a year 2000 survey, 44 percent of Americans say that the main reason for not participating in an organized carpool or vanpool is because it is more convenient to drive one's own car to work. Rather than costs, accidents are the greatest transportation-related issue of concern to the American public. (Bureau of Transportation Statistics Omnibus Household Survey, August 2000). This explains to a large extent why the poor gas mileage of sport utility vehicles is not an apparent disincentive to prospective purchasers. While car sales were 4 percent lower in June 2001 than in June 2000, sales of light trucks (pickups, SUVs, vans, and minivans) were up 5 percent from a year earlier, reaching the highest volume of June light truck sales in at least 10 years (Ward's Communications).

Highway vehicle miles of travel in the U.S. declined nearly 1 percent in March 2001 compared to March 2000, it has been speculated that this is due to higher fuel prices driving passengers to seek alternative modes of transportation. It is unclear whether this is a trend that will be sustained.

For nearly half a century, transportation has accounted for about one-fourth of total U.S. energy use and two-thirds of total oil consumption. Petroleum supplies about 97 percent of the energy used in transportation.The transportation sector consumes about one-fourth of the energy used in North America with road uses comprising about four-fifths of the U.S. transportation sector's total energy use. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, transportation sector carbon dioxide emissions in 1999 were nearly 15 percent higher than 1990, although carbon dioxide is not considered a pollutant.

The prevalent pollutant from cars are smog precursors -- Nitrous oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). NOx are also emitted by coal-burning power plants and VOCs by certain types of trees. When exposed to sunlight, these emissions react to form smog. Smog can be seen in the air as haze. It can damage plants, particularly after chronic exposure, and has both chronic and acute effects on human health ranging from shortness of breath and asthma to heart attacks in the most extreme cases. In order to improve the public health and general air quality, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 included schedules for those areas in non-attainment (i.e. exceeding specific criteria for air quality) to clean up their act, or lose federal transportation funding.