("Gig 601XL Builder" wrote)
[snip]
First, Eisenhower was President when the interstate highway system was
funded and his direct intervention in the political process had a lot to
do with it.


Agreed.

Ike was there at the beginning and saw the project through after the war.

http://www.princeton.edu/~howarth/304.Projects/Scott/Pages/interstates.html

(snips from the story)
In reviewing the history of the interstate system, it seems that Eisenhower
was the true steamroller behind the laying of federal interstates! In 1896,
only 150,000 miles of the nation's 2.1 million miles of roads were surfaced
in any form, which was normally brick, wood, or stone. In 1919, the U.S.
Army commissioned a trans-continental motor vehicle convoy. A Lt. Dwight
David Eisenhower volunteered for the trip. Starting in Washington DC, they
arrived in San Francisco 62 days later.

Remembering his 1919 Army trip plus his reaction to how quickly German (and
later, Allied) troops could move around that country in World War 2 on the
autobahns (built in 1935), Eisenhower pressed for a national highway system.
While he wanted such a system, he didn't start it as is commonly believed.
What made the idea catch on was his ability to convince people that this was
a national, not state, issue. After his transcontinental Army trip he
thought a national network of two-lane, paved roads would be sufficient, and
in the 1930's that was probably true. That changed after he saw the speed
and efficiency offered by the four-lane German autobahns.


Montblack