The National Highway System (NHS) is a network of strategic

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-acces ...

s within the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, including the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

and other roads serving major airports, ports, military bases, rail or truck terminals, railway stations, pipeline terminals and other strategic transport facilities. Altogether, it constitutes the largest highway system in the world. Individual states are encouraged to focus federal funds on improving the efficiency and safety of this network. The roads within the system were identified by the

United States Department of Transportation The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States a ...

(USDOT) in cooperation with the states, local officials, and

metropolitan planning organization A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is a federally mandated and federally funded transportation policy-making organization in the United States that is made up of representatives from local government and governmental transportation authoriti ...

s (MPOs) and approved by the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

in 1995.

Legislation

The

Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA, pronounced ''Ice-Tea'') is a United States federal law that posed a major change to transportation planning and policy, as the first U.S. federal legislation on the subject in ...

(ISTEA) in 1991 established certain key routes such as the Interstate Highway System, be included. The act provided a framework to develop a National Intermodal Transportation System which "consists of all forms of transportation in a unified, interconnected manner, including the transportation systems of the future, to reduce energy consumption and air pollution while promoting economic development and supporting the Nation's preeminent position in international commerce". §2. Declaration of policy: Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 (, ) is a United States

Act of Congress An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities (called Public and private bills, private laws), or to the general public (Public and private bills, public laws). For a Bill (law) ...

that was signed into law by

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

on November 28, 1995. The

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to ...

designated about of roads, including the Interstate Highway System, as the NHS. Aside from designating the system, the act served several other purposes, including restoring $5.4 billion in funding to state highway departments, giving

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

the power to prioritize highway system projects, repealing all federal speed limit controls, and prohibits the federal government from requiring states to use federal-aid highway funds to convert existing signs or purchase new signs with metric units. The act also created a State Infrastructure Bank pilot program. Ten states were chosen in 1996 for this new method of road financing. These banks would lend money like regular banks, with funding coming from the federal government or the

private sector The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government. Employment The ...

, and they would be repaid through such means as

highway tolls A toll road, also known as a turnpike or tollway, is a public or private road (almost always a controlled-access highway in the present day) for which a fee (or '' toll'') is assessed for passage. It is a form of road pricing typically implemente ...

or taxes. In 1997, 28 more states asked to be part of the program.

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

was the first state to use a state infrastructure bank to start building a road. An advantage of this method was completing projects faster; state laws and the lack of appropriate projects were potential problems.

Overview

According to the

Federal Highway Administration The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two programs, the Federal-aid Highway Program a ...

, the National Highway System includes roads important to the United States' economy, defense, and mobility, from one or more of the following road networks (specific routes may be part of more than one sub-system): *

: The entire Interstate Highway System (which is also known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) is included in the NHS, but retains its separate identity within the NHS. * Other Principal Arterials: Highways in rural and urban areas which provide access between an arterial and a major port, airport, public transportation facility, or other intermodal transportation facility. (Facilities accessed include 207 airports, 198 ports, 190 rail or truck terminals, 67

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

railway stations, 58

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

terminals as well as 82 intercity

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

terminals, 307 public transit stations, 37 ferry terminals, and 20 multi-purpose passenger terminals.) * Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET): The entire network of highways which are important to the United States’ strategic defense policy and which provide defense access, continuity, and emergency capabilities for defense purposes. * Major Strategic Highway Network Connectors: Highways which provide access between major military installations and routes which are part of STRAHNET. * Intermodal Conectors: Routes which provide access between major intermodal facilities and the other four subsystems making up the NHS. The system includes 4% of the nation's roads, but carries more than 40% of all highway traffic, 75% of heavy truck traffic, and 90% of tourist traffic. All urban areas with a population of over 50,000 and about 90% of America's population live within of the network, which is the longest in the world.

References

External links

STRAHNET description
at US military's Transportation Engineering Agency

at the GlobalSecurity.org * Weingroff, Richard F.
Backbone: Creation Of The National Highway System

National Highways System Proposed in 1913

State-by-state maps of the National Highway System
of the Federal Highway Administration {{Authority control Highways in the United States Federal assistance in the United States 1995 in American law

Legislation

Overview

See also

References

External links