Traveling across the great American southwest, we have generally avoided the interstate highways. Lots of speed, which is not an imperative for us, lots of commercial traffic, and lots of people in a hurry to get to their destination. Driving them I get the same kind of feeling I get in big cities; people rushing to arrive somewhere, missing out on all the stuff in between. Maybe they’re in a hurry to get to the next big city so they can rush around that one? I can’t imagine people on the interstates having a well-developed sense of wonder.
The interstate highway system is often regarded as one of the greatest public sector achievements. I’m not a fan of public sector projects though, so I often ponder how the country would have developed without the interstates. Would more small towns and small business have survived or thrived? Would families have dispersed less as children grew up and left home? How would American car culture have developed differently? Would rail have still been a viable form of interregional or interstate passenger transportation? Would there have been less intermingling and resulting homogeneity of regional cultures and dialects?
It’s easy to default to a mode of thinking that assumes if things had not developed the way they did, they would not have developed at all. I find this stultifying.