#interstates

[mapsontheweb]

US counties with/without an interstate

[everydaygothic]

interstate gothic

The car speedometer says you are going 80mph, but the dotted white lines at the edges of your lane are crawling by. The scenery around you is as distinguishable as if you were standing still. And the music on the radio is garbled, as if you were listening to it at half speed. The mountains in the distance have not gotten any closer.

[notwearingknickers]

The interstates are in numerical order.

[trexalicious]

🤯

[bloodstained-blonde]

the interstate is a funeral procession

car after car after car

marching on forever

we all march towards death

i speed towards mine at 70 miles per hour

[gilmourtheapatosaur]

For the best example of being stuck in a bad traffic jam with the worst drivers outside of a metropolitan American city, it’s always an interstate with three numbers. I-295 Baltimore/Washington Parkway, I-495 DC beltway, I-695 Baltimore beltway. The gps can provide the travel time but it will always add an extra hour because traffic on any of these interstates is always unpredictable.

Writing fanfic as a non-US citizen like

[teamremovalsau1]

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[johnjankovic1]

Commercial Galaxies

Not only were highways a simulacrum for America’s consumerism awash with billboard galore but they also emblematized an ambassador of tourism. Amongst tertiary industries the amusement park most notable for its flirtation with physics and lovable mascots featured prominently in family destinations after the 1956 Highway Act. Such escapism drew an influx of park goers so much that visits could be deemed a national pastime as crowds flocked to the cacophony of fun and laughter within the grounds. Out-of-state visitors in their enthusiasm for the roads began to perceive these excursions as seasonal if not weekend staples rather than exotic pilgrimages in virtue of how distance was trivialized. In an ex-post examination day trips were far more manageable whilst the industry’s exponential growth largely owed itself to the accessibility provided by the infrastructure. Attractions of great scale and scope were otherwise illogical if their topology was tantamount to a remote island that denied ingress like the protracted commutes from before. Any project of this species would be deemed as nothing short of a white elephant were it to anesthetize the frequency of attendees. On the other hand when freed from the preserve of locals the expansion of markets that actively sought consumers from faraway made such ventures viable.

Triumph over spatial barriers that once hobbled the industry when travel might have been too onerous did bring forth a tectonic shift even for the nation’s identity. These monuments to leisure were now just a hop, skip and a jump away as Walt Disney who founded the eponymous Disneyland a year shy of the Highway Act would find out. The location of this icon for the Western seaboard was not at all arbitrary since its perimeter sat on the footsteps of the Interstate within sight of a hundred yards. Market studies had shown that this spot situated a mere stone throw’s away from the Interstate 5 segment known as the Santa Ana Freeway would promise to capture the migratory patterns of vacationing families (Adams 1991: 109). The location invited parents with children in tow to the curated world and the genius was how proximity funnelled consumers straight into the park with convenience. The choice to be nestled next to the Interstate informed at least partially why Disneyland became the darling of American culture as attendance evolved into a rite of passage. The impetus of new infrastructure elevated the park to the status of national treasure because together they stood for the ‘soft power’ of postwar idealism against the grey utilitarianism of the Soviets. America’s identity in a bipolar world would thus be forged against the spectre of the Cold War.

Disneyland’s market grew as a concomitant of the Interstate whereby 40 percent of attendance issued from out-of-state visitors in the first three years alone. This measure inexorably went up in the ratio vis-à-vis Californians who partook in the same entertainment hence vindicating just how much business was a function of highways. The efficacy of these roads to dispatch consumers towards this citadel of childhood dreams was instrumental in the company’s success (Marling 1991: 174). The scenic journey itself in the iconic station wagons of those days proved to be just as much a part of the charm. Walt Disney’s prescience in his calculated gambit therefore paid off handsomely. Bereft of this diversification in geography via thoroughfares a large share of the company’s foot traffic would have remained elusive to the detriment of profits. Speaking of which these said highways subtly filtered the most bourgeois of tourists who hailed from some of the highest quartiles of the income bracket. A 1958 survey revealed that in the profile of visitors 74 percent of families were owners of vehicles manufactured in 1955 or later as another 70 percent boasted proprietorship of a house (Findlay 1993: 90). Before long in its second year the park’s patronage of 4m visitors would eclipse the combined tourism of the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone (Goldberg 2016).

Admissions that grew by a factor of two in 1970 gave way to an ecosystem burgeoning around this commercial lodestar whose allure prompted an armada of companies to neighbour its terra firma. The seeds of infrastructure in the guise of highways reaped a concentration of business that was later a kinetic node for the hospitality and entertainment industries in Anaheim. From an orange grove to a thriving metropolis the city’s rapid evolution in its economic destiny resulted from the influx of consumers and the attendant intensity of commercial activity to service the former. A premium of revenue from the economies of agglomeration was to be had for companies which situated themselves within a five-mile radius that perpetuated even more appeal as a coveted utopia for leisure. Prior to the arrival of Disneyland the region was a sleepy outpost of fifteen thousand residents with less than thirty-four restaurants and eighty-seven motel rooms. By 1970 a gold rush had manifested with over four hundred restaurants and twelve-thousand rooms to accommodate the throngs of revellers (Findlay 1993). Anaheim’s fortunes in commercial real estate were intimately identified with Disney’s interests that spoke to the city ceding its autonomy in preference of the park’s hegemony. The juggernaut guaranteed a hotbed of industry in reciprocating the magnanimous gesture.

Less than a decade after the park’s founding the Major League baseball team known as the Los Angeles Angels were rehoused to within two miles inside of a $21m stadium. Yet again less than a year upon this fortuitous news did America’s leisure capital welcome a new $15m convention centre in its midst that would see a troika of industries amalgamating business with pleasure (Findlay 1993). The domino effect wrought by the Interstate changed the entire parameters of development in Anaheim. Between the satellites of Disney, a sports franchise and a rental hall which in concert formed America’s quintessential tourist destination the city shed its prosaic roots in its maturity towards a cosmopolitan hub. Disneyland itself became a flagship for its parent company whose operations generated half of total revenue by 1970. So successful was the Highway Act at precipitating the economic infusion into the tertiary sector that in 1971 the humid marshlands of Florida would also see the fanfare of a hard opening for a Disney World adjacent to Orlando’s I-4. The canon for immunizing operations against any logistical shortcomings was replicated on the other side of the country only this time the business catered to consumers on the Eastern seaboard. The gravitational pull of the Interstate was too great to be unheeded by serious entrepreneurs.

In the prelude of transplanting Mickey Mouse into Central Florida the city of Orlando was a sedate community that bordered the state’s artery of I-4 which had been completed in 1965. In prospecting for a second home Walt Disney finally set upon a landmass twice the size of Manhattan not too far away from America’s gateway into space known as Cape Canaveral (Bright 1987). A land acquisition of twenty-seven thousand acres was subsumed under the company’s property assets to commence development on Disney’s most grandiose project hitherto (Holy and Who 2018). The unique selling proposition for the site was the junction of the I-4 and I-95 that Walt Disney had surveyed by plane in 1963 which was the provenance for the epiphany of his new Eldorado. With the banner years of success on the West coast the brain trust had reached the consensus that the new market was already primed for Disney’s legacy project. The committee on the development’s feasibility concluded that 95 percent of visitors would arrive by the I-4 which abrogated any need for investment in infrastructure (Goldberg 2021). Upon construction a cottage-industry of eateries and lodgings proliferated as a denouement of Disney’s halo effect. Orlando subsequently would grow faster than any other city at an average annual rate of 8.2 percent (Callaghan 1990).

These lofty statistics are a commentary on why the region’s geographical endowments wooed the company as a tantalizing prospect over the thirteen other venues considered. Florida was an irresistible suitor with its sun-kissed landscape amiable to year-round operations and the factoid that three-fourths of the American population resided on the Eastern seaboard. The profitability of Disney’s dreamscape was therefore more or less assured within the Sunbelt. In preceding years a paltry 3.5m tourists would vacation annually in Central Florida but upon the park’s inaugural year that number soared to 10m. Foreseeing such value creation from afar in 1967 the Florida legislature conceded full autonomy to Disney World which bore similarities to the Vatican as it was the beneficiary of a derogation from state rules. The universe that would be created in Florida’s hinterland would then be prosecuted over forty-seven transactions to secure twenty-seven thousand acres at a cost of $5m or $48m when adjusted for inflation. This bargain-basement price in the real estate market materialized by the subterfuge of shell companies procuring properties in secret lest prices inflate due to land speculation upon news of Disney’s interests. By sidestepping the mistakes in Anaheim the average price per acre came to be $180 (Foglesong 2003).

The 1970s emblematized the honeymoon of Disney’s incursion into Orlando that transcended the previous years of inertia as a phalanx of tourists descended upon Florida. The marquee asset which was ten times larger than its sister park in California generated much curiosity and such interest was well deserved since $400m was ploughed into the project. A budget of this proportion which would approximate north of $3b in today’s currency set a watermark so high that other attractions were simply mediocre by comparison. The barometer of success from such a financial commitment was measured by attendance and the park did not disappoint. Patronage reached over 50m after a mere five years of operation (Kurtti 1996). The park’s ethos of nostalgia wedded to futurism sold a cornucopia of tickets despite the period’s stagflation which was a testament to Disney’s recession-proof business model. The degree to which the company diversified earnings was the sine quo non of its hegemony over competitors whose revenue streams were more linear between their ticketing and in-park sales. In contrast Disney captured guests within its ecosystem of intellectual property that monetized a mosaic of memories from media to merchandise. Ergo the branding wizardry quickly transformed Central Florida into a magnet for tourism.

The Highway Act of 1956 so became a seminal piece of statecraft that provided for America’s ascendency. Dynamic changes borne from the legislation altered industries in indelible ways and rightly so as the fiscal stimulus exceeded even Europe’s Marshall Plan. That was not a misreading nor misprint since postwar reconstruction for the most battered precincts were dwarfed by appropriations made under the Interstate System. Perhaps the former may approximate industrial policy as exporters matched European demand after it was laid to waste by war but the infrastructure marathon had greater spillovers pregnant with downstream effect. Whereas a plethora of goods made their way across the Atlantic from factories unscathed by conflict the expressways at home fundamentally restructured the American economy. The executive decision to import Germany’s prodigy of the Autobahn would affect a kaleidoscope of industries and herald the genesis of consumerism. New roads and bridges realigned overland supply-chains insofar as nothing would escape the productivity reforms of this substantial investment from manufacturers to real estate markets. The breakneck advancement in less than a decade post-Act came to fruition on the heels of modernizing mobility.

Often lawmakers exercise a great deal of discretion when electing to subsidize policy objectives lest it crowd-out private investment and redound to deadweight loss due to market distortions. However in the case of highway politics the value created was overwhelmingly positive in terms of logistics and development. Between assembly lines in Detroit galloping away and the wholesale creation of a domestic tourism industry the Interstate System ushered an era of postwar affluence into the American consciousness. Mid-century exceptionalism was again on display since its wartime heroics of recent past with the country now embarking upon the largest public works project in history. The industrial machine was stirred from its dormant state after a supply glut from the war had arrested production in a peacetime economy. Industries therefore set upon a warpath only with the proviso that this time they would be retooled and poised to indulge the essential and non-essential needs of consumers. Those local roads and railways which once bore the brunt of transporting goods would be substituted for the alacrity of superhighways. Free enterprise was then reinvigorated as the production-possibility frontier was pushed beyond the status quo whereby the boost in the cadence of industry would telegraph America’s modernization.

[8ball-wizard]

reblog to cast Fentanyl's Curse on a cop

[bananafire11]

Tadc..... dinosaurs.... tadc dinosaurs

[mapsontheweb]

East-west interstate (I) highways ending in zero.

by researchremora

[tvcrazyman]

I Barely Survived on the Road to My Florida Vacation!

[drmonkeysetroscans]

Tagged and taxed.

[goldlineremovalists]

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[bacchuschucklefuck]

space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie

[alexturntable]

"If I want to speak a bit more and have fun, would be Carlos or Pierre but Carlos or Pierre would be a mess like after a day I will just want to sleep and with them it would be very difficult because they are messy."