Origins of a Divide That Still Haunts Tourism Today

Once you turn off the country road toward our place on Mayo Lake there is a mile of gravel road before you reach the last stretch of pavement leading to our lakeside retreat.

It is what was called “macadam” when road surfaces in America first started to be improved in the 1820s (as depicted in the image below.) 

Many so-called paved roads in the countryside today are macadam bound together with a little asphalt tar.

By 1909, just as what is now called North Carolina Central University was founded, Durham, where we alternatively live a part of each week, was being heralded for already having laid 82 miles of macadam road.

Nationwide at the time, only 700 miles of road, about 10% of the total were as good or better than those in Durham.

By that year there were almost 306,000 cars and a few more than 6,000 trucks registered in America, up from 8,000 overall in less than a decade. 

Those known as “highway progressives” were already shifting the economic impact rationale for good roads from “farm to market” to “tourism.”

But ironically, roads had long been politically, as well as ideologically, controversial.

Other than military roads, Founding Father progressives on both sides of the isle, such as Washington and Jefferson, had only been able to push through the first “national road” along what is now I-40 as a means to open up western settlements for Revolutionary War veterans.

Conservatives argued that roads were too expensive and that they should be a state issue.

Then at the state level, such as in North Carolina, they were often able to pigeonhole roads as a county-by-county issue clear up until the eve of the Civil War.

It was about this time that pleasure driving/riding in carriages took hold, usually limited to grand city parks such as those created by Fredrick Law Olmsted or in cemeteries.

But in 1888 the re-invention of the pneumatic tire, which had been unsuccessfully introduced in 1846, galvanized a grass-roots coalition of activists to push for good roads.

The coalition was spearheaded by bicycle riders who teamed with “farmers, nature-lovers, conservationists and tourists” to spawn a national movement not only better roads but a national network of “hard-surfaced, all-weather roads.”

Soon they were joined by nascent automobile manufacturers.

The roads envisioned were a means to an end such as farm to market or home to resort but all roads were intended to be scenic along the way.

Then as the movement gained steam between 1911 and 1926 “highway progressives” were overwhelmed by commercial interests who coopted the movement.

It created a schizo-polarization of tourism that persists today.

At one end are those with a deep respect for sense of place, authenticity and scenic preservation. 

On the other is a hawker-huckster form frenetically enabling billboards, developer churn, mainstream mega-facilities and other forms of cookie-cutter architecture.

To overcome conservative opposition to a system of national roadways, “highway progressives” had begun to tout tourism as a rationale.

To enlist communities along proposed roadways they encouraged them to “manufacture” reasons for tourists to stop along these routes.

Rather than look to innate qualities, community boosters egged on by a chamber-of-commerce mentality fell instead for hyperbole, thus the manufacture of roadside amusements along with monikers such as the “Grand Canyon of the East” or the “Paris of the South.”

By 1930, many states, including North Carolina had begun to fight back against blight but the forces of blight this has fueled including a faction of tourism that had found political cover among a wing of conservatives.

This wing of conservatives, which cut across party lines, has consistently and inexplicably argued that blight is good for economic development, something still being repeated by a candidate running for governor in the last election.

Tourism, if it was more open to introspection as well as critical and strategic thinking would align in such a way that it could shift this paradigm.

But don’t hold your breath. 

It isn’t just that one side of the schizo-divide is somewhat superficial.  More problematic is that the other side lacks the moral courage and passion of those early “highway progressives.”

Economic Angioplasty

A new report on the nation’s road infrastructure, including bridges and mass transit, reveals that nearly 17,000 miles of paved roadway through National Forests, National Parks and Wildlife Refuges are suffering from a backlog of more than $11 billion in deferred maintenance.

Many people think of airports when they think about travel and tourism, but 80% of domestic leisure trips and 2-out-of 3 business trips including 1-in-23 for the purpose of attending a convention or meeting, actually travel by car.

Cities that believe they can disguise billboard blighted roadsides by tidying up the drive from the airport to their Downtown are delusional, as are elected officials and private sector businesses opposed to transferring funds (taxes) to keep the nation’s economic arteries healthy.

Overall economic vitality in this country has always been enabled by public sector infrastructure. 

The report documents that revenues to build and maintain roadways include general funds (27%), per gallon taxes on fuel (26%), vehicle taxes (12.2%), bonds (15%), tolls (4%) and “other” (16%.)

So we can’t lay the lack of funding for this type of infrastructure solely on the fact that a combination of fuel efficiency, inflation and fuel prices is eroding road revenue from per gallon taxes on fuel.

Bonds such as those used recently by my adopted hometown to catch up on years of neglect are expensive and the “dues” many communities across the nation must pay for decades of neglect. Nearly 78% of highway road mileage is locally owned roads including half of all bridges.

States are responsible for 19% of overall road mileage and 48% of bridges, with North Carolina an exception because the state is also responsible for county roads as well as highways that become local roads as they pass through cities and towns.

The low rating residents gave roads in Durham on a recent survey is likely due to the relatively poor condition of state roads that run through here now that city streets are up to par.

The national report also documents how road funds are expended nationwide.  The 49% that goes for capital outlay (not including the 11% for debt service) includes only 60% which is used for rehabilitation (resurfacing or replacing existing pavement and bridges.)

Laying pavement is only part of keeping the nation’s economic arteries flowing including 80% of all domestic tourism.

There is also the matter of traffic control, public safety and forested roadsides to soak up storm runoff, along with air pollution and scenic views that are so crucial to tourism and business appeal.

In fact, scenic roadsides are the first and last impressions given relocating or expanding businesses during site selection.  Blight along roadsides, including billboards and other litter, create a brand no amount of marketing and promotion can overcome.

Manicured and tree-lined roadsides and respect for scenic vistas signal to decision makers something far more important than incentives or tax breaks.  They signal whether a state or community has self-respect and whether they grasp what it takes to grow and attract talent.

No amount of branding and other marketing can offset the first and last impressions created by roadside neglect and blight.

The reason shifting to a per mile assessment for roads, which Oregon has been testing for a decade, is that 90% of vehicle miles traveled in the United States are for freight compared to just 10% for passenger travel.

Trucks are also disproportionately harder on pavement.  By tonnage, nearly 70% of freight shipments were by truck in 2010, and that amount will grow by two-thirds by 2040.

As consumers we are going to pay one way or the other because taxes on freight travel will be passed on in the prices of products.

But an added plus to going to a per mile assessment is that it may make commercial enterprises re-think and re-engineer supply chains to minimize distance, something that will be better for our health and for our local economies.

Private sector businesses or their allies who are resistant to paying more to bring roadways up to par are in effect pushing costs off on the general public.

This is something economists call an “externality” when the full costs of products are pushed off on the public sector and taxpayers rather than being incorporated through full-cost accounting.

A study shows that Americans pay noticeably lower charges for our roads than other countries.  This is lost though on regressive members of Congress who are hamstringing the federal highway trust fund.

By working through the details over the past decade, Oregon, which also pioneered the per gallon fuel tax in 1919, has already adopted a per mile approach after beta testing it in cooperation with residents and business owners, some of whom agreed to provide access to GPS systems.

GPS is increasingly common in passenger vehicles and driver smartphones as well as freight trucks, but the Oregon per mile system is being first phased in beginning with a cap of 5,000 drivers willing to opt in to paying 1.5 cents per mile driven vs. 30 cents per gallon on fuel there.

Until privacy issues are resolved (apparently some people don’t want to divulge their secret destinations) it will be based on the miles traveled each year and measured during state safety inspections.

That works out to $150 a year for someone driving 10,000 miles a year.  It meets the fairness test by shifting more of the burden for roads to heavy users and freight haulers.

A trial in Iowa of the per mile approach showed 40% in favor beforehand and 70% positive after it.  A Nevada report provides some excellent examples comparing the current per gallon tax with a miles traveled fee.

It isn’t yet clear how VMT, as it is called, will scale up to include interstate tourists.  Nor is it clear how interstate transfers will occur unless the GPS approach is eventually implemented, which will make it even fairer by eliminating private driveways and facilitating out of state transfers.

The Institute for Transportation Research is recommending a shift to miles traveled in North Carolina.

I’m ready and I don’t mind if it tracks via my GPS.  Being able to readily find a vehicle that is missing or overdue is a bonus far more significant to me than privacy.

But I do see why it shouldn’t be accessible to the press so that confidential corporate merger discussions or bipartisan political initiatives have privacy.

Pulling the wool someone’s eyes, though, may be a thing of the past.

A View Too Long

The question is why the overkill?

Along highway exit ramps, lawmakers have now given out-of-state billboard companies permission to clear cut 340 feet of trees and vegetation in North Carolina’s cities, even if it conflicts with local, voter-approved ordinances.

The 7 seconds of blight (at exit ramp speeds) created by the 340’ of clear cutting is ostensibly so drivers have the potential to take their eyes off the road for the 2.5 seconds studies show it takes to decipher a message on a roadside billboard.

The overkill is nearly three times what is needed for the billboards to have their view.

By comparison, research also shows that this same span of inattention to the roadway in order for a billboard message to be deciphered more than doubles the chance of an accident.

It is the same span of inattention found just prior to 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes.

What does a typical billboard pay for this desecration in fees and property taxes in order to reach the fewer than 1-in-10 Americans, 1-in-25 marketing professionals and 1-in 33 small businesses who still use billboards?

On average each year, what they pay in fees and taxes on each billboard equates only to the cost of a good steak dinner for two with fixings (wine not included) compared to raking in $24,000, on average, from rentals.

North Carolina doesn’t permit billboards to be assessed on rental revenue.

There is no taxpayer compensation required, as a rule, for the public trees that are clear cut, unless it is an exceptionally large specimen.  Even then the cost is about 1% of the value economists place on a tree in terms of just ecosystem services, soil retention and pollution removal.

Even then, lawmakers permit the billboard companies to sell the wood to offset the cost of removal. 

The rate of crashes on these exit ramps varies by type, but on average there are about 1,200 crashes per year per ramp.  Close to half are rear-end collisions, a type of crash with a nearly 1-in-3 chance of resulting in injury.  This costs society $8.5 million in medical treatment alone.

Visual inattention is a contributing factor for 93% of rear-end crashes, and the rate is four times higher for novice drivers.

Even when paying rapt attention, studies have now shown that drivers cannot detect slowing by the car ahead unless the difference is 8 to 10 miles an hour, a finding crucial to safety on exit ramps.

So turning away for more than a split second is hazardous, and exit ramps are no place to be purposely creating distractions, especially just to triple the time needed to gawk at a billboard.

Overall, more than half of car crash fatalities are caused by drivers who are distracted, overcorrecting, driving erratically, or failing to stay between the lines, nearly as much as alcohol and speeding combined.

No matter that the most recent North Carolina billboard legislation is in conflict not only with other state law but also the federal Highway Beautification Act, both of which guarantee localities a say when it comes to signs such as these.

Even without the opposition of 8-in-10 North Carolinians, all of this would seem enough to motivate sensible billboard companies to revisit this with lawmakers in pursuit of a more moderate solution.

Complicating such a move is that the average North Carolina lawmaker is my age, 65, and generationally a “baby boomer,” nearly double the median age for North Carolinians.

Studies show that different from younger generations, boomers still rely on advertising and sales pitches.  Millennials, for example, do consumer research via a smartphone while boomers are twice as likely to research via newspapers and magazines.

Lack of concern for roadsides in the legislature may reflect a widening generation gap.

Use of roadside billboards has declined to around 3% among small business advertisers.  At the local level, even when mid-sized businesses are included, that proportion climbs to just more than 1-in-10.

More telling, according to the Local Commerce Monitor, 6-in-10 of the small and medium sized businesses that still use billboards do not give them positive ratings for return-on-investment.

In fact, the study reports that overall these businesses are shedding advertising channels and billboards are next in line to go.

I wonder if North Carolina would make better decisions about billboards if state officials deployed return-on-investment metrics?

One measure should be against the state’s new slogan for visitor-centric economic and cultural development:

“Beauty Amplified!”

Where Democracy Is Still Potent

Recently during a public hearing in southwestern North Carolina, the head of the state association for outdoor billboards tried to argue that North Carolina was a safer and better place in the 1970s when it didn’t have roadside trees.

Of course that wasn’t the case, but his point was that cutting down all of the trees along the state’s roadways and especially around billboards would make them safer.  Of course, that isn’t true either.  Current setbacks for trees along roadsides have long been calibrated based on meticulous safety research.

However, those who might fall for this faulty reasoning, which unfortunately may include far too many legislators coupled with copious amounts of campaign donations, might be surprised to learn that it was proven at the dawn of motorized vehicles that cutting down roadside vegetation actually made roadways less safe.

This phenomenon was first observed in the English countryside where early roadways were often lined on both sides by very tall hedgerows.  However, when the hedges were lowered, it was found that drivers then increased speeds and drove more recklessly because they “felt safer.”

Andrew Zolli, co-author with Ann Marie Healy of the 2012 book Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, included that tidbit in a presentation recently.  He also shared findings that when bicyclists wear helmets they may wisely be protected from the occasional fall but the fact is that when they wear one, drivers feel they can move closer to bicyclists at higher speeds increasing the likelihood of accidents.

Zolli is the executive director and curator for a fascinating organization known as PopTech, a collaboration of social innovators and scientists dedicated to investigating, prototyping and growing social innovations and breakthroughs.

In my opinion, at heart he is a futurist.  In a recent presentation Zolli noted that one reason we’re so lousy at predicting the future is a condition he calls “novelty bias.”  When we think long term, we take what is newest and make it the dominant feature of the future.

We’re doing that now with many technologies.  Today smartphones and tablets are toppling desktops and laptops but that doesn’t mean they won’t be just as rapidly toppled.  Thinking long term means looking beyond today.

Zolli notes that we have a tendency to focus too much attention on fast-moving threats such as terrorism, and not on far more powerful slow-moving threats such as climate change.

For instance, he cites that we’re spending trillions on the 1 in 28 million chance we’ll be impacted by an act of terrorism but zilch on the 1 in 6 chance we’ll be impacted by climate change.

Too often this misdirection is fueled by media frenzies that give us very unrealistic expectations.

The same phenomena can be fueled by social media such as neighborhood listservs.  On one level they can provide a useful heads up on suspicious activity, but on other levels they amplify and recirculate alarm to the point that many subscribers tune out just when they should be tuning in.

In organizations of every size you can see “novelty bias” undermining strategic thinking both at the management and board governance levels.  As Dr. Michael Porter argues, ninety-five percent of executives are too focused on operational effectiveness.

Governing boards often spend far too much time on compliance and not enough on strategic thinking.  This results in what Porter cautions is trying to mimic and then best the competition.

Truly strategic thinking should lead them instead to “compete to be unique.”

I find it disingenuous that many of the people who trash government regulation as ineffective are adherents of the ideology that has gutted its capacity over the last forty years.

But I agree with Zolli that regulations often become far too complex to be effective, primarily made that way, in my experience, by lobbyists who continue to pollute the regulatory process on behalf of special interests long after the legislative mandate.

A wry example Zolli gives is that BP had stringent rules for being careful with the handling of coffee while something obviously wasn’t working as intended with higher risk requirements such as proper capping of wells.

Regulations need to be more nimble and resilient to be effective and that starts with far more adequate enforcement by executive branches at every level. Regulations must also protect the process from legislative and special interest meddling.

Strategic thinking begins with executives and governing boards being aligned on the true purpose of the organization.  This isn’t, as the authors of Can’t Buy Me Like argue, just a mission or vision statement.

Purpose has more to do with intent.  Who is served?  How are lives touched and improved?  What is the organization’s ethos or character?  Purpose according to the authors is the core that informs every move.  It isn’t just about marketing.  In fact, they point out that an organization’s true purpose may never show up in its marketing.

If as consumers we only valued organizations, brands and products with passion, maybe we wouldn’t need regulations.  The author of Red Thread Thinking defines passion as drive connected to the heart of what the organization is all about.

Since the 1980s, anti-government partisans have largely gutted the effectiveness of regulations.  Today their work perverts true democracy by demonstrating that six people for whom only a few of us were permitted to cast ballots can thwart things supported by 90% of Americans or North Carolinians.

However, we are not powerless.  There are companies such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, that even as meat inspection has been eviscerated, has firmly stood for “food with integrity” and a core purpose illustrated by the commercial at this link and in this article in Onearth magazine about the pork growers who inspired it.

A tool I use and hope to help improve by factoring in companies that use desecration marketing such as outdoor billboards is GoodGuide which is most useful in the form of a smartphone app.

It ranks companies, brands and products by a 1 to 10 scale for how they treat society, health and the environment.

This is where true democracy can still  be potent.