historic context of maryland highway bridges built between 1948 ...

SECTIONTHREEHistoric Contextexplained that American cars were ―big, fast, and comfortable,‖ while the country‘s roads were―awful.‖ U.S. 1 had become an ―oxcart route for giant trucks‖ (Brean 1955:112). The followingsection discusses how Maryland sought to change both the reality and the perception of ―1955cars and 1935 roads‖ in the period from 1948 to 1960.4.3 HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT IN MARYLAND AFTER WORLD WAR IITwo major factors drove the increase in highway construction in Maryland from 1948 to 1960:bad roads and more cars. American roads were already unable to handle increasing traffic loadsbefore the war and had deteriorated further due to lack of maintenance. The solution seemedsimple—existing roads must be fixed and new highways built in order for the economy to growand prosper. However, other trends were also driving the need to expand the highway system.Maryland, like American society as a whole, was mobilizing and moving like never before. Thecontinued rise of the automobile as a symbol of the American way of life became inexorablylinked to a shift in population to the suburbs.The monetary investment in Maryland‘s roads in this period is an example of how stategovernment responded to these cultural trends by building new roads and bridges to keep everincreasingnumbers of vehicles moving on the state‘s highways. Maryland also took advantage ofincreased funding for highways and other roads from the federal government. Improved roadsand bridges were more than ever a crucial part of both the country‘s infrastructure as it began atransition from being primarily an urbanized place (in terms of where most of the populationlived) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to becoming a suburbanized society bythe end of the twentieth century (Brugger 1988:575). The SRC played a major role in makingMaryland a modern, suburbanized society with roads to match and the state‘s collection ofbridges shows the material investment in roads in the period as the American lifestyle becamebased on individual mobility enabled by the automobile.4.4 MARYLAND AND FEDERAL HIGHWAY POLICYThe rise of the American suburb and the rapid shift of population in Maryland to its suburbanareas in this period played a major role in developing political support for government fundingfor new and improved highways to service the changing suburban landscape. In addition,Americans simply wanted cars. The post war period saw a huge increase in car purchases byMarylanders and traffic counts soared on all of the state‘s main highways. The need for modernmulti-lane highways became more acute as the number of vehicles increased. Crumbling twolanehighways were obsolete, clogged with commercial traffic, commuters, and vacationerscompeting for road space. Travel time increased as more cars drove longer distances and mainarteries became congested by unlimited access from side traffic. Cars were larger, heavier, andfaster at a time when bridges were not strong enough and roads not wide enough. Americansdrove on a hazardous 1920s highway system built to handle low speeds, with dangerous curves,narrow bridges, and numerous intersections (Kaszynski 2000:162).During the war years, highway construction essentially halted except for defense-relatedprojects. Consequently, the highways experienced rapid deterioration at a time when they carriedheavier loads for which they were not designed (Childs 1949:17-19). Previously, the nation‘srailroads had been able to meet the transportation needs of most Americans with railroads alsocarrying the bulk of America‘s commercial traffic. After World War II, most railroads\15-SEP-11\\ 4-7