INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS: THE GATEWAY TO THE FUTURE
THE VISION
Imagine a vast, ultramodern, nationwide transportation network in the United States — a network with ultra-safe superhighways, self-driving cars, autonomous electric aircraft, and a sleek high-speed rail (or even a hyperloop) system — all merging at massive transport hubs near major cities. Imagine too that this futuristic network is powered exclusively by clean renewable energy, and even facilitates the distribution of clean energy around the nation, greatly reducing our national carbon footprint. You might say such a vision is possible in the distant future if we can somehow find the national will and the massive funding to make it happen; however, there is a pathway that could make this vision a reality much sooner and at far less cost than anyone might dare to dream. That pathway is a familiar one to all Americans. It is called the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System (IHS).
The IHS is a massive, underutilized resource that could open the way to a bright transportation future for the country. Using the foundation of the IHS, the system could be modified and greatly expanded in a phased approach to include the following new features:
· Thousands of electric charging stations to supply renewable energy to electric cars and soon-to-be electric aerial vehicles
· Underground electrical transmission lines to improve our national electric grid and bring the promise of renewable energy to the entire nation.
· A high-speed mass-transit rail, or hyperloop-type system
· Installation of solar and wind power facilities along the entire length of the IHS to supply more than enough green energy for all the new facilities
Starting from scratch, the cost for these new facilities would be astronomical — but adding them to the 48,400 mile-long, interstate right-of-way (ROW) would leverage the many billions of dollars of public investment that has been made in this superhighway system so far. Taking advantage of these millions of acres of public land, and massive improvements that have been made to it — earthmoving, overpasses, underpasses, etc. — would vastly reduce the cost of the envisioned facilities.
Even so, with the US debt at record levels and rising by the moment, how could we possibly afford to embark on such a national undertaking? The answer is that, just as we have done with the burgeoning private space industry, we could unleash the billions of dollars of potential investment that can come from public/private partnerships.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Begun in 1956, the IHS is a marvel of modern engineering — it moves millions of passengers and gigatons of cargo throughout the country with unprecedented safety and efficiency. On a map of the US (below), the IHS looks like a vast national circulatory system (which essentially, it is).
Building on concepts pioneered by the German Autobahn, the IHS was designed as a divided highway with controlled access. This innovation divided the traffic flowing in opposite directions and limited roadway access to fewer locations, with merger ramps and lanes to smoothly integrate traffic flowing on and off the highway. Furthermore, a myriad of overpasses and underpasses ensures no “at grade crossings” which means no conflicts with other intersecting roadways. All of these features made the IHS much safer and easier for drivers to navigate than conventional roadways.
With more space available than the Germans, the US increased the width of highway medians, and shoulders, creating wider “clear zones”. These zones allow for traffic that accidentally leaves the roadway to come to rest without hitting an obstruction, further increasing safety. Furthermore, the IHS was built with expansion in mind, resulting in even wider ROWs in many areas. In congested cities, much of this additional space, of necessity, already has been consumed by roadway expansion; however, between major cities, most of this open space has been preserved.
Since its inception, the IHS has grown to be one of the most expansive roadway systems in the world, and it continues to grow today. Although the IHS is indeed a great American achievement, like most good things, there always is room for improvement. For example, one of the primary advantages of the IHS — limited access — also can be a crippling disadvantage when things go wrong on the system, such as accidents or construction. Limited access means that you can’t get off the highway when problems like these occur. Almost all US drivers have spent many hours in traffic jams on the IHS, wasting millions of gallons of fuel, in total, and making one wonder about the term “superhighway.”
A second drawback that limits the effectiveness of the IHS is human drivers. For anyone traveling on the IHS at high speed who has looked over to see another driver gazing intently at their phone, no other explanation is required. The sad fact is 90 percent of the accidents on all US roadways, with about 40,000 deaths and many thousands more injuries each year, are caused by human error.
DRIVING CHANGE
Major players around the world are vying to take humans out of the driving equation via self-driving vehicles (SDVs). [Note: There is a list of abbreviations is at the end of this article.] Although some say that the technology hasn’t quite yet arrived, it could be easier to incorporate SDVs into the IHS than many think. It is a far more difficult task for SDVs to navigate the stop-and-go traffic of city streets with intersections, bicycles, pedestrians, multiple signs, traffic signals, double-parked taxis, and trucks than it is for them to navigate a controlled-access divided highway such as the IHS.
In his book, DRIVEN: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Alex Davies recounts the remarkable SDV technological progress that has been made since 2004 — when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held an autonomous vehicle race through the desert called the DARPA Grand Challenge. Intended to foster the development of autonomous military vehicles, this event instead touched off a still-ongoing fierce competition to develop self-driving passenger cars and trucks. The competitors include industry giants GM, Tesla, Waymo (a spinoff of Google), and Uber, to name a few. The SDV competition has led to today’s automated driving features in most new vehicles. Davies’ book emphasizes that many SDV competitors have mastered highway driving but perhaps are still many years from mastering “main street” or everyday driving.
But just because SDVs haven’t mastered all roads, there’s no reason we shouldn’t take advantage of them on the IHS. After all, according to the Federal Highway Administration, the IHS accounts for 24 percent of all US highway travel, so bringing fully autonomous driving to the IHS would have a huge national impact. In addition, a system developed for the IHS also could be applied to thousands of miles of other controlled access, divided highways in the country.
CHANGING DRIVING
So, what would such a system look like? That question probably could best be answered by the SDV competitors themselves. Perhaps another DARPA-style challenge, or competitive procurement proposals could be used to develop the IHS system. To start the ball rolling, here are a few suggestions:
First, the IHS should be “geofenced” so that fully autonomous driving capabilities are allowed only within certain boundaries. This could be as simple as ensuring all IHS/SDV-capable vehicles have built-in onboard GPS so that they “know” when they are within the fully autonomous boundaries and can activate or deactivate their systems (and notify their standby drivers) accordingly.
Second, the individual systems developed by the various manufacturers need to be made to work together in an integrated (connected) way. This could finally fulfill the long-awaited dream of vehicle platooning. Platooning involves multiple closely following, electronically-connected vehicles operating in unison to accelerate, decelerate or stop (if necessary). This allows them to save up to 25% in energy usage, by drafting — which could be very useful in extending electric vehicle ranges. Platooned vehicles can also quickly and safely navigate obstructions such as construction, stalled vehicles, and road debris. On the IHS, platooning all vehicles would make “slowdowns” on the system a thing of the past and permit up to 3 times more traffic volume (per 1990’s government research) without adding more lanes. It also could group cars and large trucks into separate platoons, greatly improving highway safety. The basic technology for coordinating large numbers of moving vehicles already exists — think of recent displays of hundreds of drones forming intricate patterns in the sky — and could quickly be applied to SDVs.
A third suggestion is that vehicles should be connected to a larger IHS network of sensors providing monitoring and control functions. This might consist of pole-mounted sensors such as cameras (visual and infrared), radar, etc. These sensors would monitor the entirety of the highway for animals, (including humans), debris, ponding water, ice, extreme wind, etc., and report these hazards to SDVs which could react accordingly. Construction, emergency, and law enforcement activity also would be reported to the system to move over and slow vehicles as needed — and maintenance crews would be notified for debris removal, animal control, and so forth. In addition to guiding SDVs, the system could prevent calamities such as the recent I-95 wintry-weather shutdown in Virginia. An integrated system, as described, would essentially constitute an automated highway, fulfilling another dream dating back to at least the 1940 book Magic Motorways by Norman Bel Geddes.
After a competitive selection process, the federal government would select the system architecture, setting off a rush by vehicle manufacturers to make their new vehicles compatible with it (system-capable). After-market upgrades could be developed for newer existing vehicles, as well. The IHS system could be phased in by individual highway segments — for example, city to city, or state to state — after the sensory system was in place for that segment and it was geofenced. Cars would notify their occupants in advance of entering or leaving geofenced segments and advise them to take control, as required. If they failed to do so, the car would safely pull over and park in the emergency lane.
It could take quite some time for all vehicles to become system-capable, and older vehicles would inevitably interfere with fully autonomous vehicles — let’s just call them “capable” and “non-capable” vehicles. For instance, a platoon of capable vehicles could find all available lanes blocked (as trucks often do today) by non-capable vehicles, slowing the entire system down. Therefore, it might make sense to separate the capable and non-capable vehicles for some time, until all vehicles become capable. Specific lane(s) could be designated for capable vehicles only, and the remaining lanes would be for non-capable vehicles. The sensory system would monitor all traffic to make sure the non-capable vehicles stay in their lanes and perhaps issue fines by license plate ID if they don’t. The capable vehicles would be able to handle a few interlopers, although it would inevitably slow them down.
When the non-capable vehicle drivers see traffic whizzing by in the capable vehicle lanes, it will provide an incentive for them to upgrade. Car rental companies and ride-hailing giants like Uber and Lyft could also provide system-capable alternatives during the adoption period. Eventually, all vehicles allowed on the IHS would be required to be capable, and all lanes would be open to them. Human drivers would not be allowed on the system — except in the event of key systems failure — and 100% fully autonomous driving on the IHS would be a reality. For humans who love driving too much to give it up, all the other roads in the country would be open to them, many of which parallel the IHS
Establishing an automated driving system on the IHS would be a transforming and worthy goal in and of itself — however, if we allow ourselves to dream even bigger — we can completely re-imagine the IHS system.
FINALLY, A MODERN MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM
One component of this dream would be the addition of a mass transit system (MTS). It could take the form of a high-speed rail system (HSR), a hyperloop-type system — or even both — on individual highway segments, to test the best technology. As efficient as an IHS/SDV system may be, the MTS system would be far more efficient, moving more people (and cargo) faster and using far less energy than any highway system could match. The MTS system would be used primarily for long-distance travel between major cities while the IHS/SDV system would continue to serve the smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. When fully functional, the MTS could substitute for interstate air travel, greatly reducing CO2 emissions. As with the IHS/SDV system, the MTS could be phased in segment-by-segment, as it was completed.
Where would the MTS be located along the IHS ROW? Though it’s ultimately a decision for the talented engineers who will design the system, one concept is to locate the MTS primarily in the median areas of the roadway. A particularly useful aspect of the original roomy design of the IHS is that generous medians were built into the system. While medians may have narrowed in congested cities, they often are untouched between cities.
Locating the MTS primarily in the median areas would have several advantages. One is that it would minimize interference with the on/off ramps that are usually on the outside shoulders of the IHS right-of-way. Another is that it would allow the MTS to fully utilize the existing overpasses on the IHS. There is ample room for the MTS to pass under the overpasses while avoiding the overpass supports that are often near the center of the median. These advantages would make the medians a likely place to locate the MTS. The medians have been used for MTSs before as shown below.
On the other hand, locating the MTS on the outer “shoulders” of the ROW might make for safer construction in some highway stretches since access for construction could be gained from properties outside the ROW, avoiding potential disruption of IHS traffic.
Delaying the bulk of the work on the MTS until the IHS/SDV system is fully functional also could minimize construction impacts. The system would track all traffic and let workers know what to expect at any given moment — and work crews would return the favor, notifying the system of their activities so SDVs can react appropriately to minimize traffic delays.
IT’S ELECTRIFYING
There currently is a growing impetus in both the US and the world toward making most autos electric in the near future. The Biden Administration is pushing auto manufacturers to commit to making half of all US auto sales electric vehicles (EVs) by the end of the decade. California, Massachusetts, and the European Union have all targeted 2035 to fully transition to all-electric vehicle sales. Plus, there were over 2,000 electric semi-trucks on US roads by 2019 with over 54,000 expected by 2025. These large electric trucks can take 10 times or more energy to charge than passenger vehicles.
These EVs will need an abundant source of green electric energy and hundreds of thousands of charging stations to reach their transformative potential. The U.S. infrastructure bill recently signed into law allocated 7.5 billion dollars for EV charging and related programs, with a target of 500,000 charging stations by 2030. Many of these charging stations will need to be located in interchanges along the IHS–just as gas stations are located there now.
Another type of EV being developed with breathtaking speed is the electric-vertical-takeoff-and landing (EVTOL) aircraft, (aka, the pilotless air taxi). Like other EVs, if EVTOL aircraft are destined to come into general use, they will need recharging stations. Interchanges of an evolved IHS would be a convenient location for recharging EVTOLs as well as SDVs. One could envision an IHS interchange with a large charging plaza with spaces for both ground-based EVs and EVTOL aircraft. The IHS also could serve as an “air corridor” to help manage the air traffic of EVTOLs while they keep close to their energy source.
RENEWABLES AND THE ROW
The total land area of the IHS is truly immense. Although an exact total area of the system could not be found, assuming a conservative estimate of 400 feet for the average width of the ROW times the full length of the system would yield an area of approximately 2,347,000 acres. Because much of the width of the IHS is reserved for clear zones and expansion, it is largely open space, not covered by pavement or other facilities. In some areas, there are huge open spaces or isolated stretches of trees (forest islands) in the median. In addition, most states have large tracts of publicly owned land at rest stops and parking areas, not counted in the total land area above. This expansive, open land area has a huge potential to generate renewable energy, primarily solar and wind energy.
Utilizing the IHS lands for renewable power generation is not a new idea. There have been numerous actual applications of it since 2008 when the Oregon Department of Transportation installed a small solar panel array in the ROW of the I-5 and I-205 interchange near Portland. Since then, upwards of 30 more renewable energy projects have been completed on IHS lands in at least six states, including Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Ohio. The majority of these projects have been solar installations, but at least three wind turbines also have been installed.
A study published in 2020 by the University of Texas (UT) attempted to assess all of the IHS lands available for renewable energy generation — under current regulations. The study generally found that for safety reasons, federal law and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) regulations severely limit the amount of land area that can be used for renewable energy (renewables). There are currently two restrictions that account for the great majority of the IHS lands being deemed off-limits for renewables. The first is the previously mentioned clear zones (for crashes). The second is the “lack of secondary access” limit. This limit constrains renewables projects in areas that have no access other than the interstate lanes themselves, presumably to prevent their construction and maintenance from disrupting traffic and affecting highway safety.
Because of these restrictions, the study limited itself to the consideration of lands exclusively within IHS interchanges — which were further limited by clear zones and secondary access limits. Regardless of these many limitations, the study found that over 127,500 acres are available in the interchanges for renewables projects with a potential to generate up to 36 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy per year or about 1% of total US electrical usage. As luck would have it, interchanges are exactly where electric vehicle charging stations are urgently needed — and 36 TWh per year equates to 720 million passenger vehicle charges per year (at an estimated 50 kilowatt-hours (KWh) per charge).
The study also noted that the “modernization” of existing federal law and regulations could open much more ROW areas for solar development. In the meantime, even under existing regulations, solar arrays for charging stations could begin to be installed immediately in most interchanges upon proper review.
To relax ROW use rules, the key factor is the safety of the traveling public. As previously discussed, automated highways and SDVs would dramatically improve the safety of the system — possibly leading to relaxation of the rules and the opening of much more of the IHS lands to renewables. For example, without daily car crashes, clear zones could be used for renewables instead. These zones are between 30 and 46 feet wide in straight stretches of roadway and up to 50% wider in curves. If we assume that the average width is, say 40 feet times two (for the two directions of the divided highway) or 80 feet wide for the entire length of the IHS, it would add approximately 472,000 acres to the amount of ROW available for renewables development. Adding this amount to the 127,500 acres noted above could bring the total generating capacity to enough for over 3 billion 50 KWh charges per year.
Finding ways to relax the secondary access limit could open up still larger additional swaths of IHS land for the development of renewables. The safety and predictability of SDV traffic also may allow the easing of this rule — but if not — perhaps helipads could be built within these areas for access. Also, many such areas along the IHS shoulders could easily be accessed through private lands or other rights-of-way. ROWs for many other roads abut and even parallel the IHS — and many utility ROWs (such as power lines and pipelines) cross the IHS, providing numerous potential access points. If approximately 1 million acres — of the estimated 2.3 million total IHS acres — could ultimately be used for renewables, the generating potential could approach 8% of total yearly U.S. usage. Looking at these rough estimates, one can begin to see how the IHS system could potentially power itself with energy left over to help power the overall U.S. grid. Furthermore, if the IHS land area ultimately proves insufficient, there are millions more open acres adjacent to the IHS.
With a transition to EVs will come a critical shortage of funding for the continued operation and maintenance of the IHS (and roadways in general). That is because the National Highway Trust Fund (NHTF), which now finances the great majority of these costs, relies on taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel for its revenue.
As EV adoption reduces demand for these fuels, less revenue will be available for this fund. However, because IHS lands are public property, a portion of the revenue generated by selling the electricity to users at recharging stations — or by selling excess power back to utilities — would flow back into the public coffers to operate and maintain the system, replacing the old gas taxes.
Renewable energy from IHS lands could also power the MTS. Almost all such mass-transit systems in the world are powered by electricity and using green energy for the MTS would make the entire system greener. To help fund the system, a portion of the fares for riders could flow back into the NHTF.
GAUGING THE GRID
Much has been written in the US in recent years about the need for upgrading the nation’s electrical grid — to balance electrical demands across the nation — and to facilitate the distribution of renewables around the country. Highly publicized blackouts in California and Texas in the past couple of years highlighted the need for more transmission lines to quickly move electricity to any area of the country instantly as demand dictates. The recent congressional infrastructure bill included $70 billion for grid improvements including new high-voltage transmission lines (HVTLs), with an emphasis on supporting wind and solar facilities.
There are two primary reasons why more HVTLs are needed to advance the use of wind and solar energy in the US. First, varying regional climatic conditions make the potential for generating wind and solar power uneven across the country. The best wind resources are in the Great Plains (from the Dakotas to Texas), although pockets of significant wind resources are scattered elsewhere, including offshore. Similarly, solar energy can be generated nationwide, but more can be generated in sunny areas, like the desert southwest, the Great Plains, and the southeast. In general, less populous areas of the country (where there are fewer transmission lines) have higher generating potential, but energy demand comes from more populous areas.
Secondly, the weather can dramatically affect wind and solar generation — as they famously say, “the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine”. Additional HVTLs would help balance the uneven, intermittent nature of renewable energy, allowing it to flow, as needed, from less populous to more populous areas — and from areas with more favorable weather conditions for generating it, at any given time — to areas with less favorable weather conditions.
Research supports the need for more HVTLs. A 2021 National Academy of Sciences report advocates taking steps to make the US carbon-neutral by 2050. It estimates that to do so would require a 40% increase in electric transmission capability by 2030; “in order to better distribute high quality and low-cost wind and solar power from where it is generated to where it can be used across the country.” The problem is that HVTLs are very difficult and costly to build in the US today because of regulatory and legal hurdles, public resistance to new lines and because sometimes hundreds or even thousands of property easements must be acquired to do so.
HVTLs typically look like silver spaghetti strung between tall structural steel towers — a hideous sight only a utility executive could love. Voters in Maine recently rejected a proposed HVTL that would have carried hydropower from Canada to New England — NIMBY strikes again. Furthermore, state regulators who see little benefit for their state, have sometimes rejected lines that must traverse multiple states.
The recent infrastructure bill ostensibly gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy more authority over state and local regulators to push more HVTL projects within certain “national interest utility corridors”, but this isn’t likely to stop the legal wrangling over them. Plus, future government leaders may have less enthusiasm for fighting these battles.
UNDERGROUNDING
One way to solve some of these issues would be to designate the public lands of the IHS a vast national interest utility corridor and build HVTLs on it. The IHS crisscrosses the country traversing every state and serving almost every major municipality, while existing HVTLs, in turn, crisscross the IHS, providing numerous potential grid interconnection points. But, building HVTLs on the IHS may not end the fight — because the lines would still be ugly — unless they were to be installed underground. Placing electrical transmission lines underground (or undergrounding) has long been advocated by various environmental groups. Undergrounding has a long laundry list of advantages and disadvantages, but overall, it is currently cheaper to install HVTLs aboveground, our aesthetic sensibilities notwithstanding.
Undergrounding of all sorts of utilities today is accomplished increasingly by directional drilling, which is far less disruptive from a construction standpoint, than installation using excavation and open trenches. Because of the paramount need to limit construction impacts and keep the IHS running as smoothly as possible, directional drilling would almost certainly be the method of choice for installing electrical cables along the IHS — for both HVTLs and all the other IHS system components. Directional-drilling equipment is relatively small and could be staged well off the roadways and even outside the ROW if necessary.
The ultimate in directional-drilling technology has been developed by the oil and gas industry, with the capability to drill multiple boreholes precisely in all orientations (including horizontally) for many thousands of feet from a single location. Maybe as oil and gas demand gives way to renewables, idled drilling equipment and thousands of workers could be repurposed to help create this new transmission network.
Using directional drilling, the underground lines could go anywhere in the ROW, but the best location for them may be directly under the paved road surfaces. For ease of construction, there would be no better location — because IHS road surfaces were typically installed atop several feet of granular materials of predictable size and consistency — making drilling through them much easier than other locations in the ROW where rock and other hard-to-drill materials might occur. Also, there are few, if any, other utilities within this space that would have to be avoided by the drilling mechanism.
The thick, hard road surfaces would protect the underground lines from potential damage caused by inadvertent future excavation. Roadway surfaces would not be weakened by drilling beneath them because the drilled pathways (boreholes) would be cased. Casing lines involve the installation of a pipe, usually made of steel, that permanently lines the borehole. Casing strengthens the borehole against collapse and serves as a permanent pathway (or conduit) for installing, or replacing, materials placed within it. This makes future maintenance much easier, as the conductors can be more easily removed and reinstalled if they suffer failure or require re-sizing or upgrading. One reason for upgrading the HVTL conductors might be the future development of superconductors. Indeed, some of the HVTLs already under construction employ the use of first-generation superconductors.
There would be ample space to install conduits for HVTLs under the roadways, given that the typical paved road surface for two lanes is 24 feet wide (not counting the emergency lane), and there are at least two lanes — and often many more — for each of the bidirectional halves of the IHS. Also, conduits can be stacked vertically if needed. This would comfortably provide enough space to allow for numerous conduits, including spares for upgrading lines or emergency repairs.
Installing HVTLs underground along the IHS also would eliminate the need for the hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of easements now required for new lines, further reducing their costs. Considering the reduced easement costs, legal costs, and ease of construction afforded by utilizing IHS lands, maybe the cost of underground HVTLs would not be much more — or even less — than the cost of aerial lines. In the end, even if undergrounding does cost somewhat more than aerial lines, it would be worth the extra cost to remove these eyesores from the landscape. With the new grid interconnections that would come from this new transmission network, it may even be possible to retire some of the existing HVTLs with their gigantic structural steel towers. Perhaps these behemoths could be melted down to make more casings.
HVTLs could be installed incrementally along particular highway segments, or even partial segments, to make critically needed grid interconnections or to connect particular wind or solar projects. Eventually, most IHS segments may include HVTLs, greatly expanding the national grid.
DOLLARS AND SENSE
After reading this, skeptics may fret about what they see as billions of dollars of government investment, and decades of disruption to our existing infrastructure. However, all of the proposed improvements could be done incrementally, and result in almost constant improvement to the current system with manageable initial costs. In addition, major cost savings — not to mention saving lives and property — could come from IHS automation and SDVs. For instance, if there were fewer accidents — and if speed was controlled automatically, instead of by the human foot — law enforcement could be redirected to other roads. Also, the many thousands of miles of guardrail and retaining cables that are constantly being installed or repaired would no longer be needed — the need for vegetation control would be reduced in areas covered by solar panels — fewer “breakaway” sign replacements would be needed, and so forth. Most importantly, the IHS would be able to accommodate more traffic volume without the need to constantly expand the roadways, ultimately saving billions of dollars. Finally, urgently needed revenue for IHS operation and maintenance could be generated by renewable energy sales and MTS rider fares, helping to replenish the NHTF.
The costs may increase substantially over time, but through public/private partnerships, they could be borne mostly by large corporations (for a share of the future profits) and less by the taxpayers. For a recent example of how such public/private partnerships can achieve great things at relatively low public cost, one need only look to the burgeoning, awe-inspiring, private space industry. Indeed, many of the same industry leaders (Musk, Bezos, Branson, and others) who have advanced this marvel, have taken a keen interest in earth-bound transportation and energy systems, and are already hard at work on revolutionary technologies to speed their development. As they have proven with the private space race, give them a common goal and wonders can be achieved.
As one example of how a public/private partnership might work on the IHS system, Elon Musk’s Tesla Energy Subsidiary is a major global installer of gigawatt-scale solar systems and battery energy storage facilities — which could be used at charging stations supported by renewables.
Tesla also has advanced EV charging systems and currently is installing as many as possible to support their EV line. Perhaps Tesla could partner with the government to install their systems in IHS interchanges. Tesla would then be allowed a reasonable percentage of the energy sales revenues, with the remainder going to the NHTF. The Tesla system also would be required to support other manufacturers’ vehicles, hastening the overall transition to EVs. Other potential partnership possibilities abound. For example, Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop company, several other hyperloop startups, and various high-speed rail companies also might be interested in a similar proposal for the MTS system.
Other tech giants such as Apple (rumored to also be developing SDVs) and Microsoft, and ride-hailing giants such as Uber and Lyft might also want to partner with the government in various ways. Many other billionaires such as Bill Gates have expressed keen interest in various technologies to combat climate change and may also want to participate (donations welcome). The unending streams of revenue that could come from an evolved IHS system including rider fares, energy sales, software sales, sales of highway automation components, SDV sales and rentals, and EVTOL sales, would be more than enough to attract investments from tech giants and entrepreneurs alike.
So how should we begin this journey? The government must take the lead — to competitively select the IHS system architecture, approve and facilitate the installation of renewables and charging stations in IHS interchanges — and enact legislation to loosen IHS land restrictions to allow more renewables, HVTLs, and eventually the MTS. To begin initial planning, a congressional commission should be established — one that should include not just bipartisan lawmakers but also the SDV competitors, other tech giants, roadbuilders, engineers, and planners.
Infrastructure investment and public/private partnerships are something that people of all political persuasions can agree upon. Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe about climate change — making these investments will not only reduce our carbon emissions, but will boost the US economy, keep us competitive on the world stage, and save lives. Economic analysis has found that the IHS has returned 6 dollars to the US economy for every dollar spent on it to date — and the envisioned improvements would surely do the same. The visionaries who originally launched the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system 65 years ago left the American people an immense national treasure. With similar foresight, it is time to open the treasure chest and release the full potential of this amazing resource.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
IHS — Interstate Highway System
ROW — Right-of-Way
SDV — Self-Driving Vehicle
DARPA — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
GPS — Geo-positioning System
MTS — Mass-Transit System
HSR — High-Speed Rail
EV — Electric Vehicle
EVTOL — Electric Vertical-Takeoff-and-Landing Vehicle
FHWA — Federal Highway Administration
UT — University of Texas at Austin
TWh — Terawatt Hours
KWh — Kilowatt Hours
NHTF — National Highway Trust Fund
HVTL — High-Voltage Transmission Line
