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Did you know that in America there are nearly 76,000 kilometers of publicly built and funded
roads in the Interstate Highway System? The term "interstate highway" simply means that
the roads travel between and across different states. The Federal‐Aid Highway Act of 1956
authorized $25 billion to build a paved highway system across the United States. This was
the largest public works program in American history and was meant to improve road safety
while connecting far-flung parts of the country with each other. This new system of multiple-lane,
high-speed, paved highways allowed regions and towns that were not part of the nation's
economy to become easily reached and helped create a national domestic market for companies
to supply their products to more people around the nation. In most cases, state governments
own and operate the part of an interstate highway that is in their state. Therefore,
each state can determine the speed limit on that section of highway. Maintenance is their
responsibility as well. These roads are often used to speed evacuations in times of pending
hurricanes and other storms. The cost to maintain and improve interstate highways is shared
by states and the federal government, and mostly comes from gasoline taxes. The way
interstate highways are numbered in the United States helps prevent drivers from taking a
drastically wrong turn. Routes with odd numbers run north to south, while routes with even
numbers run east to west. Iowa is located at the intersection of two interstate highways.
The first is Interstate 80, which runs east to west, starting in New York and ending in
San Francisco. The second is Interstate 35, which starts in the north, at Lake Superior
in Minnesota and ends in Texas on the Mexican border in the south. The longest interstate
highway is Interstate 90, often simply called "I-90," which starts in Seattle, Washington
in the Northwest United States and ends in Boston, Massachusetts in the Northeast. Interstate
90 is 5000 km long.