Comment by cldellow
6 years ago
> The Alaska Highway. Starting in 1942, 1,700 miles of highway were built over the course of 234 days, connecting eastern British Columbia with Fairbanks, Alaska.
I grew up in Dawson Creek. Our claim to fame: "Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway starts here!"
The Alaska Highway as built in 1942 is nothing like a highway that most people would envision. It wasn't paved, for example. It was good enough for military vehicles with crews of soldiers who could make ad hoc repairs to the road as needed while they transited through, who had extensive survival skills, and could literally radio for assistance if needed.
It wasn't opened to the public until 1948 -- so perhaps 6 years, not 6 months, is a better estimate of its time.
It's also shrunk by almost 20% as it has been continually rebuilt to make it passable by passenger vehicles.
It's an accomplishment, no doubt, but I feel like omitting these significant caveats is meaningful.
Hm, thank you. I checked a few sources when adding this one but will go back and double-check the specifics/qualifiers.
Wikipedia, incidentally, seems to support the shorter timeline:
“The official start of construction took place on March 8, 1942, after hundreds of pieces of construction equipment were moved on priority trains by the Northern Alberta Railways to the northeastern part of British Columbia near Mile 0 at Dawson Creek. Construction accelerated through the spring as the winter weather faded away and crews were able to work from both the northern and southern ends; they were spurred on after reports of the Japanese invasion of Kiska Island and Attu Island in the Aleutians. During construction the road was nicknamed the "oil can highway" by the work crews due to the large number of discarded oil cans and fuel drums that marked the road's progress.[9] On September 24, 1942, crews from both directions met at Mile 588 at what became named Contact Creek,[10] at the British Columbia-Yukon border at the 60th parallel; the entire route was completed October 28, 1942, with the northern linkup at Mile 1202, Beaver Creek, and the highway was dedicated on November 20, 1942, at Soldier's Summit.”
The road existed after 9 months, but it was unpaved and only open to military convoys, as it often needed repairs and was single track in places. This was fine for its purpose (a land route to get materiel to Alaska in case the Japanese attacked), but isn't what most people think of when they think of a highway.
It's a huge achievement - something like 10,000 soldiers were involved in its construction.
But I worry that when most people think highway they think of the interstate system - straight lines, gentle grades, paved, multiple lanes.
This is more akin to the army setting up camp and building accomodations for thousands - we wouldn't say they built 1000 houses, they put up tents. Still an impressive logistical feat, but... different.
Yes, that the name may be misleading is a fair point. Even though it was (I think) called the Alaska Highway from the beginning, I changed the text to say "military roadway" -- hopefully this helps to clarify. Thanks for pointing this out!
You make a fair point. However, what was built would have been considered a highway at the time, so while the distinction is worth keeping in mind, it is more an evolution in the meaning of the word highway.
"...cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars.".
IMO, extrapolations like this are not very useful unless it also means it can actually be executed at that cost in 2019.
Is that really the case here?
It's not meant to be an extrapolation; it's meant to be a comparison. The point is they did it more cheaply than is conceivable today.
No, it's specifically meant to illustrate that the inflation in infrastructure costs has been wildly faster than the inflation in the rest of the economy. The US can't build infrastructure for any kind of reasonable cost anymore and it is a big fucking problem.
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The point is that it cannot be.
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“We chopped down enough trees and leveled enough ground that you drive supply trucks through...sort of.”
I rode it on a motorcycle in 2015. The days of a “I survived the AlCan” being a meaningful t-shirt are well behind us. It’s a little rough, mostly paved, but not what they built in 243 days.
If you extend it to the whole Pan-American Highway, the timeline gets stretched to 3 or 4 decades from first proposals through execution, but the scope is pretty amazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_Highway
I've always found it kind of surprising that the Darien Gap has never been closed. I can only assume that if Panama and Colombia were rich countries rather than poor countries that it would have happened. People solved the engineering challenges required to build the Channel Tunnel and the Øresund Bridge, after all.
(Note that I'm not saying that it should happen or that it would be a good thing necessarily.)
The Øresund Bridge was discussed for a century before being built, and was deeply controversial.
It’s not just money, it’s a matter of government not having very good control over those northern areas of Columbia. Even if they built the road, it wouldn’t be safe to travel due to the density of smugglers and cartel activity in general.
Building (not to mention maintaining) a long road through a sparsely inhabited tropical marsh/swamp is pretty expensive and complicated, especially if you want to minimize environmental immpact.
The reasons are mosly two: -deforestation -blocking illegal drugs
Yeah,
I think this example along with what I just randomly know about the other examples, gives the impression that this list is essentially meaningless.
I recall the "Marin Ships" being indeed constructed quickly but of very poor quality and in no way equivalent to constructing real navel ships quickly, just "we can put X amount of metal into the water and hope it doesn't sink too quickly".
And so forth, for significant number of these examples. Some of the examples, that I know nothing of, might be more "real" or more significant examples time-efficiency, but the list doesn't seem a credit to them. Lots of these are "yeah, we can put a stake in the ground quickly" and that's it.
I had to look this up. Marinships were the west coast Liberty Ships, built in Sausalito. Later they build fleet tankers & oilers there, probably to the same "get it done now" quality standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship
My dad went to the European theater on a Liberty. He had the top bunk in the hold and spent the voyage looking at the truly awful welding that had been done in the shipyard. But they didn't have to last longer than a few years, so lots of corners were cut.
This definitely cuts the snarky comparison to the bus lane in San Francisco down to size.
Sounds a lot like the Dalton highway , we had to rent a special vehicle which had a radio to do 2 way communication with the traffic and the highway wasn't paved.
A CB radio is not necessary on the Dalton highway, though vehicles that transit it frequently are usually equiped with one to communicate with the semis that make up much of the traffic (especially to coordinate passing on dusty sections). The Dalton has several unpaved sections but is fairly highly maintained and certainly does not require vehicles transiting to perform road work themselves. You certainly do not need survival skills (at least during the summer) to drive it as there is a consistent amount of semi traffic that can assist you if something goes wrong as well as periodic pump stations for the pipline. If anything, the Dalton would be more akin to the Alaska highway some time after it was opened to the public.
I drive the freeways just to go a few miles most days, and tens of thousands in a few years. Carbon be damned, I can't thank highways enough for the life they enabled. When teleportation comes along I'll firmly recant and hope this comment has disappeared, but until then I'm in debt to the national arteries I benefit from today.
I can't punish freeways enough for the life they've enabled. The closest thing you will get to teleportation in your lifetime is moving to a city. Maybe you cannot get from one side of the world to another in a minute, but you certainly can walk down the street to get anything you need in a minute or two in good major cities.
How do you think things get too the cities?
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You're right and I wish I could afford it. Real Estate prices are validation that cities are a better way to live. I bought a car 8 months ago and I've only driven 1500 miles but I'd love to drive less. We have inherited a legacy of feeble foresight and racism, built into our cities and roads, but we're going to build something better in our time.
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Anything you need... maybe, but most certainly not anything you want and it won’t be at a very good price.
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Same here. I used to live in Jacksonville Florida and routinely used the I-95 to get around the city. What's funny is I'd always envision "warping" when getting on the highway, because inner city traffic speed is ~45 mph, and then it'd instantly jump to 80+ mph on the highway.
80mph+? Instant reckless driving in Virginia, anywhere in the state.
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This seems like a nice example of shipping something you are embarrassed of, like Reid Hoffman says.