Create it Segment by Segment by Dean Adams Curtis

How can the Green Interstate ever be created from such a diverse patchwork of rural route and byways? Never underestimate the willpower of the people of the United States. The Green Interstate will be created from the small towns up, constructed segment-by-segment from existing roads.

Green Interstate happily provides sample resolutions and measures that local towns and counties can customize and adopt. Email us your concept for a segment, or interest in considering a Green Interstate segment, and we'll send the sample resolutions to you. If you'd like, we'll also post your proposed segment on our evolving Green Interstate map. When a town, county or state passes a Green Interstate segment resolution, it will be "provisional," specifically not going into effect until the entire system, or a major sub-section of it, has been cobbled together by provisional resolutions in other localities much like yours.

There will be an ever growing group of participants in this nationwide endeavor who will soon be gathered together into online forums and working groups. If you are someone who would like to participate in these, click our email link below.

As we near completion of major sub-sections of the Green Interstate, events will be held that will publicize the new/old road and encourage use. You want to know how soon this system can be put together? So do we! Certainly it will be done within ten years. Probably it will be done within five. And possibly all of us who are inclined to will be driving on at least a large sub-section of it by the end of 2010.

Rely on Vision of Small Towns Across America

For America to succeed in the creation of a Green Interstate we will need to rely on the vision of people in small towns across the nation. We will need to put our hope in human nature and ingenuity in localities most readers have never heard of.

Everyone's heard of famous Route 66, many know Route 99 that runs through California. Yet these routes may not be the segments chosen by local councils and county commissions for utilization as components of the Green Interstate. That's because these routes experience a steady flow of traffic by commercial vehicles, farm vehicles, local residents and travelers who don't like interstates. Far more probable will be the designation of Green Interstate segments that have previously been under the classification of rural routes or country roads. Designating a road to be part of the Green Interstate system does not put it off limits to farm equipment, trucks transporting goods from local fields, or local residents heading into or out of their nearby town. Perhaps localities can figure out a time window early in the day, during which non-green vehicles can use the route and Green Interstate users can be informed about the times segments will be used for local commerce.

For more information, email Dean Curtis, editor of GreenInterstate.com.

Or click the link at right to watch green interstate videos.

See green cars currently rated okay to roll on the interstates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).