National Highway System (United States)
The National Highway System (NHS) is a network of strategic highways within the United States, including the Interstate Highway System and other roads serving major airports, ports, rail or truck terminals, railway stations, pipeline terminals and other strategic transport facilities.
Individual states are encouraged to focus federal funds on improving the efficiency and safety of this network which makes up 4% of the nation's roads, but carries 40% of the traffic and 75% of heavy truck traffic. About 90% of America's population lives within 5 miles (8.0 km) of an NHS road. The roads within the system were identified by the United States Department of Transportation in cooperation with the states, local officials, and metropolitan planning organizations and approved by the United States Congress in 1995.
Read more about National Highway System (United States): Legislation, Overview
Famous quotes containing the words national, highway and/or system:
“All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Off Highway 106
At Cherrylog Road I entered
The ‘34 Ford without wheels,
Smothered in kudzu,
With a seat pulled out to run
Corn whiskey down from the hills,”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)
“Never expect any recognition here—the system prohibits it. The cross is not affixed to the genius, no, the genius is affixed to the cross.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)