Sunday, February 14, 2010

The I's kill the routes

As we travel on all our alt route roadtrips, we always admire the old architecture and relics we run across on our adventures. All over the country, local politicians lobby for the interstate to come through, lest they lose out on presumed economic development. The thing is, due to highway safety regulations and the horrible "highway beautification act" the thousands of motorists that used to drive by the stores of something like Route 1 now ride down a souless interstate, unaware that any town even exists that could have stores and restaurants that they would want to visit and spend their money.
Now many of these old routes and being turned into interstate style roads and the road widening they have to do to get the highway funds kills tons of amazing old timey fun. This article sort of talks about it, but nobody talks about interstates being bad for local economies everywhere. This one has a quote about the internet taking away business, but thats really not true. People still enjoy shopping in person and will buy things in actual stores they would never buy online......

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=897954&category=BUSINESS

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