A two-way relationship
Cars did not simply appear on roads that were ready for them. Early drivers found dirt tracks that turned to mud in rain and ruts in dry weather, and the first cars were often slower than a horse on bad surfaces. Over the following decades, roads were rebuilt for motor traffic, and the better roads in turn made cars more useful and encouraged more people to buy them. That loop, with infrastructure and vehicles pushing each other forward, is the subject here, and it explains many features of modern life.
Roads before cars
Good roads were not a new idea. The Romans built durable paved roads for armies and trade, and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries engineers such as Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet in France, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam in Britain developed layered stone construction. McAdam’s method, using compacted crushed stone, gave its name to macadam. These roads served carriages, wagons and animals, and the rise of early railways in the nineteenth century then shifted much long-distance travel away from roads, leaving many rural roads neglected.
The bicycle lobby
Bicycles brought road quality back into public debate. In the 1880s and 1890s, the cycling boom created a large group of riders who complained about rutted roads. In the United States, the League of American Wheelmen helped launch the Good Roads movement, lobbying for better surfaces. When cars arrived, they inherited this political support. Farmers, who had sometimes opposed cars, became enthusiastic about paved roads that could carry their produce to market, and the arrival of farm tractors and trucks added to that pressure.
Paving the way in the early twentieth century
In the 1900s and 1910s, road building became a public priority. In the United States, a private group promoted the Lincoln Highway, proposed in 1913 as a route across the country, to demonstrate what a long-distance road could be. The Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916 provided federal money to states for roads, and a later act in 1921 directed funding toward a connected system of main routes. Numbered highways followed in the 1920s, including the famous Route 66, designated in 1926.
Other countries followed their own paths. Italy opened early toll motorways in the 1920s. In Germany, a test road in Berlin, the AVUS, opened in the early 1920s, and in 1932 a limited-access road between Cologne and Bonn opened, which is often described as an early example of a modern motorway. The much-discussed German Autobahn network expanded later in the 1930s, and its history is sometimes tied up with political propaganda, so claims about it deserve caution. In the United States, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, opened in 1940, was another early long-distance, limited-access road.
Better surfaces were only part of the story. Cities needed ways to manage mixed traffic, and devices such as traffic signals and, later, traffic cones for temporary work zones grew out of the need to keep growing numbers of vehicles moving and workers safe.
The Interstate era
After the Second World War, planners proposed large national networks. In the United States, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized the Interstate Highway System, originally planned at roughly 41,000 miles, with limited access, wide lanes and gentle curves. It was justified partly on economic grounds and partly on defense. The system took decades to complete, and its effects were mixed: it made long-distance travel faster and supported trucking, but highways built through cities often displaced residents, frequently in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, and encouraged people to move to suburbs.
Driving culture
Better roads changed how people lived. The road trip became a national pastime, which gave rise to roadside businesses: gas stations, diners, motels and drive-in restaurants. Families could live farther from where they worked, and suburban housing developments depended on private cars. Shopping centers with big parking lots appeared. Public transit in many places lost riders, and cities designed for walking were reshaped around parking and traffic flow.
The costs and the long view
The same system had downsides that became clearer over time. Traffic crashes caused large numbers of deaths and injuries, congestion grew faster than roads could be added, and exhaust emissions contributed to air pollution. In many places, adding lanes often attracted more traffic rather than relieving it, an effect planners have debated for decades. Governments responded with safety laws, emissions standards and, in some regions, investment in public transportation.
More recently, navigation has altered how people use roads, since satellite-guided directions allow drivers to choose routes in real time. Even so, the basic pattern from the early twentieth century remains: vehicles are designed for roads, and roads are designed for vehicles. The car’s success owed as much to pavement, bridges and rules of the road as to the engines under the hood.