Interstate 70 is a main artery of east-west travel across the United States, bisecting Indiana.
Locally, I-70 carries tens of thousands of vehicles through the Wabash Valley each day. An average of about 32,600 vehicles travel the four-line highway through Vigo County daily, according to traffic counts by the Indiana Department of Transportation.
It has also been called one of the most significant economic assets in Vigo County by Steve Witt, director of the Terre Haute Economic Development Corp.
“I-70 has transformed our community,” Witt told the Tribune-Star. “Interstate Highway 70 is the primary reason we have our retail corridor along south U.S. 41. Ironically, but for I-70, we would not be enjoying the redevelopment of our downtown that has occurred over the past 15 years or so, as this interstate highway was the driving force that led to the downward spiral of downtown Terre Haute during the 1970s and early 1980s.”
Witt credits I-70 with contributing to growth in manufacturing opportunities, as well.
“Interstate highway 70 has played a tremendous role in our community’s industrial attraction efforts ... our new Casey’s General Stores distribution center project is a good example of how I-70 continues to bring economic opportunity to Terre Haute and Vigo County,” he said.
In looking at how the existence of I-70 affects the Wabash Valley, the Tribune-Star has taken a look at one of the most prominent ways that the four-lane highway comes to the public attention on a regular basis. For the past five years, that has been through media accounts of accidents, many of which occurred in construction zones.
In a look at statewide accident statistics, AAA Hoosier Motor Club reported that in 2011, Indiana highways recorded 4,309 work zone collisions, causing 17 fatalities and 684 injuries. According to Indiana Crash Facts 2011, the cost for these collisions topped $116 million.
Interstate 70 joins the lengthy I-65 and the shorter I-94 in northwestern Indiana as high truck traffic routes, according to INDOT. I-65, which runs from the Chicago area south diagonally through Indiana to the Louisville area, carries a daily average of more than 45,000 vehicles in the Lafayette area alone. I-94 in the Lake County near Gary carries more than 155,000 vehicles on a daily basis.
“I-70, I-65 and I-94 have higher shares of heavy truck traffic, and thus more wear and tear, than other state highways in Indiana. These are national truck corridors at the Crossroads of America,” said Debbie Calder, communications director of the Crawfordsville District of INDOT.
“Declining fuel tax revenue and construction price inflation in recent years has limited the purchasing power of traditional state and federal transportation funds,” Calder said. “INDOT is refocusing its financial resources to invest as much as possible in preservation of our existing roads and bridges, and the recent work on I-70 is an example of that.”
Beginning at the western edge of Indiana, I-70 stretches 156.6 miles across the state, often running parallel to the Old National Road/U.S. 40. Planning and construction on I-70 began around 1956 and some parts of it in western Indiana were still under construction until about 1976.
The nation’s system of interstate highways was imagined long before the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, was signed into being by then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a driving force behind the road system.
In February 1955, Eisenhower stated: “Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south. Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.”
Many urban legends have attached themselves to Eisenhower’s push for the interstate system. One of those most popular is that the interstates are a way to move military machinery quickly and efficiently around the nation in case of wartime invasion. Historians chalk that premise up to Cold War hysteria that grew in the 1950s and 1960s.
Eisenhower, himself, promoted the highway network most fervently as a means for expanded commerce and economic growth.
In a memoir of his first term, “Mandate for Change 1953-1956,” Eisenhower predicted that the interstate system would positively impact the American economy beyond calculation, because of the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, and the rural areas it would open to opportunities.
His prediction has proven true, particularly the area of freight transportation, and economic growth, as attested to in current times by the EDC’s Witt.