No Interstate highway in Alaska? That really true?
I’m putting this in GQ because I’m not questioning the column’s answer about Hawaii.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/700/how-can-there-be-interstate-highways-in-hawaii
I pulled up Map Quest and none of the highways had the red, white, and blue Interstate markers the ones in other states have. I am surprised they haven’t demanded their share of the honey pot.
He is right, The Alcan Hwy begins in Dawson Creek NE British Columbia, goes NW through Canada’s Yukon Territory and then into Alaska’s Deta Junction near Fairbanks.
There are roads designated as interstate highways for funding purposes. They wouldn’t meet the definition of a highway by the feds but Alaska still wanted a share of the funds.
Looks like they’re trying to create an Interstate from crappy two lane highways.
Warning: roadgeekery ahead.
Alaska has four highways which are officially listed as interstates. A list of them can be found here. None of these are actually signed as interstates, however; all of them are signed as Alaska state routes. For the most part none of these roads are Super-2s (divided highways, two lanes each direction, no surface intersections).
Essentially the interstate designation in the US has nothing to do with the type of road, but as to the source of its funding. Alaska isn’t the only state with non-Super 2 interstates; Puerto Rico also has them, and there’s even one in Wyoming (I-180 in Cheyenne). Apart from I-180 these routes aren’t signed as interstates.
There are Interstate highways in Hawaii. I lived there 21 years. Politicians lobbied hard to get them designated as Interstate so they could get a slice of the DOT money allotted for those roads. I drove all of the highways in Hawaii, and I don’t remember ending up in a different state - unless you count stoned…
“Interstate” doesn’t mean “going from one state to another.” It has to do with the creation of the Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower administration, and along with the birth of these particular highways, there was Federal money AND Federal standards that had to be satisfied in order to GET the money from the US Government.
The funding is NOT 100% Federal. The States have to have the design (approved, of course) and part of the money in hand before they get a check from Uncle Sam.
The Eisenhower administration wanted these particular highways to satisfy civil defense requirements. Those were the beginning days of the Cold War, when bomb shelters and Emergency Broadcast System tests and Communism and ICBMs were in the forefront. The mess of highways in big cities would only be an impediment to any type of evacuation effort, and big cities were considered to be major targets in the event of nuclear war. The Interstate highways had limited access, a fixed number of ramps in urban areas and a lesser number in rural areas, and were supposed to facilitate the orderly evacuation with enough advanced warning.
I’ve also heard that Interstates were designed to have long straight stretches of highway that could be used as emergency take off and landing strips for military planes, if necessary. Supposedly, though, that is just urban legend.
Hawaii has populated cities, and it obviously qualified by design and by partial State funding, to obtain Federal funding for Interstates.
Alaska seems to have some type of waiver. But the Feds are pretty adamant about the qualifications of any highway that bears the Interstate shield, and until the Alaskan highways meet those qualifications, you won’t see the red, white, and blue Interstate designation in Alaska.
~VOW
I thought a “super-2” was a two-lane limited-access highway: offramps, overpasses, but only one carriageway; often they are upgraded to a four-lane divided highway later by building a second carriageway.
The only divided highway of any length in Alaska is about 40 miles of the Glenn Highway headed north between Anchorage and the Parks Highway intersection at Palmer, AK. Otherwise, it’s all two lane, head-on road, with brief relief areas at busier tourist attractions and towns.
So, the infamous $398 million Bridge to Nowhere would have connected to a 2 lane state highway? 
You betcha!
Aren’t Alaskan ferry routes also designated an as interstate for funding purposes?
It would have connected a small town in southeast Alaska that is inaccessible by road from anywhere, to an island where the airport is, but which has no development. It was a boondoggle of huge proportion.
A common misconception. Cross-country and urban superhighways had been under study since the 1920s, and got a big push after the 1940 opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. FDR himself sketched a network, and the general corridors for the original interstate system had largely been determined before the end of World War II, in plans such as
Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of public roads. Toll roads and free roads. House Document No. 272. 76th Congress, 1st Session. Washington, U. S. Govt. print. off., 1939.
Interregional Highways. House Document No. 379. 78th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington, U. S. Govt. print. off., 1944.
Throughout the years of congressional debate, military strategists repeatedly testified that they didn’t need any particular routes or geometric specifications, always saying that highways built to promote commerce would also serve their needs. To Eisenhower, the public-works and job-creation aspects of the system were about as important as defense aspects. I am not aware of any serious civil defense or military rationale that was part of Congressional debate. The words “and Defense” were added to the name of the “National System of Interstate Highways” in conference committee, almost as an afterthought, and played no role in congressional voting. See Congressional Record, 102, Part 8, pp. 10991-10997. The definitive source on this history is Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989. University of Tennessee Press, rev. ed. 1990.