Helping roads and the environment meet common ground

SAE100Future look: When SAE was founded in 1905, nearly all highways outside cities lacked hard pavements, and were lucky to have macadam or gravel surfaces.

When SAE was founded in 1905, nearly all highways outside cities lacked hard pavements, and were lucky to have macadam or gravel surfaces. In 1905, only 161,000 miles of U.S. roads had any kind of surface, compared to more than 4 million miles (6.4 million km) paved by this year. In 1905, auto and truck registrations totaled 78,000, but by 2005 they will have exceeded 231 million.

To keep up, America vigorously built roads, culminating in our Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The emphasis was always on building new roads or providing new capacity. But we now are in the post-Interstate era, and state and federal attention has shifted to maintaining and preserving our roads, rather than expanding the system. Simultaneously, new demands of environmental stewardship have impacted road building and maintenance to levels unimaginable a few decades ago.