agitcorp

In the religion of Asphalt, Interstate Highways connect people and communities. Observation — as opposed to faith — quickly reveals the lie beneath the ideology.

The Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette drew a bunch of us out to cajun country this past weekend. The weather, the festival, the friends, the music and the food were each one better than the next. I hope to write something about the festival in a later post.

Right now it is the drive back that preoccupies my thoughts.

We traveled out from New Orleans and back home via Highway 90 — or as many signs along the route proclaim: The future Interstate 49.

As Americans, we often travel by Interstate. Occasionally, we travel by state highway. Rarely do we get to traverse the odd and thought-provoking landscape that is a way of life in transition.

Much of Highway 90 remains a rural four-lane, heavy-use corridor. This itself is a rather recent and robust upgrade from the days of two-lane state highways. Nevertheless, these state highways continue to act in many ways as connectors between the cities, towns, and villages that make up rural America.

Several features of these older state highways are worth drawing attention to.

First, they exist in the same general plane as the surrounding landscape. That is to say, when traveling on one of these roads, you feel a connection to the surrounding farm fields, industrial pipe suppliers, roadhouses, antique shops, etc.

Related to the above, existing rural highways engage the communities through which they pass. True, these state highways often bypassed the old downtowns in a first step of de-connecting communities in a misguided reification of speed and efficiency. But Highway 90 still has the occasional stop light. Perpendicular streets intersect the highway — often with the cross traffic having a stop sign. And every so often the speed limit drops as you pass though a community.

The existing rural highways also allow for left turns. While this is considered sub-optimal for people trying to go from Jacksonville, Florida to Houston, Texas, people living in rural communities understand the importance of being able to hop on the state highway and turn left into the store, or to get to your uncle’s house on the other side of the highway.

But progress is coming to South Louisiana.

As Highway 90 morphs into Interstate 49, the totalizing infrastructure of Interstate Land must be created; no deviation can be allowed. No longer can a store, restaurant, or gas station sit at a corner. Traffic must enter and exit the roadway via on-ramps and off-ramps. Stores, restaurants, and gas stations must be pushed back to create the generic landscape of Mobile-BP-Chevron-Taco-Bell-KFC-Cracker-Barrels.

Wherever a road crosses the future Interstate 49, either the road must be severed (and traffic routed a mile or two up the way to a proper clover leaf), or I-49 must be raised into the air so that Interstate traffic won’t be slowed.

One intersection at a time, inexorably, a highway that connects people is converted into a speedway that divides people, bleeds dry local stores and restaurants, and spurs the growth of national chains. The cancer of Generica finds fertile ground and metastasizes.

The road disconnects itself from the surrounding community interchange by interchange, bridge by bridge.

Finally, when it is so disconnected from the community that it is seen only as an ugly noise-producing nuisance, the community demands that walls be erected to protect itself from the ugliness. Houses two hundred feet away from each other stand divided by 15 foot high walls surrounding an elevated expressway upon which traffic moves at 50 mph (or 3 mph depending upon the time of day).

Welcome to Metairie, Louisiana.

Welcome to the future I-49 corridor.