The Engineering That Built The World Road Warriors S01E03 Subtitles

At 00:00:01,520, Character said: It's nearly 50 ,000 miles long, three
times the size of the Great Wall of

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At 00:00:08,100, Character said: with over 700 billion miles traveled
every year.

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At 00:00:14,000, Character said: But a century ago, interstate highways
don't exist.

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At 00:00:20,420, Character said: Mr. President, imagine a highway system
allowing us to drive anywhere and

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At 00:00:25,240, Character said: everywhere in America.

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At 00:00:26,660, Character said: The first transcontinental car trip?

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At 00:00:29,280, Character said: Took 63 days.

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At 00:00:30,820, Character said: Today, it takes 45 hours. The road to
building it is bumpy.

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At 00:00:35,780, Character said: It runs right into the heart of the
Rockies.

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At 00:00:39,860, Character said: Requiring massive engineering.

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At 00:00:42,140, Character said: They moved 26 million tons of soil and
rock.

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At 00:00:45,940, Character said: It's more expensive than 2 ,000 Hoover
dams. It's an investment in the future

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At 00:00:51,580, Character said: growth of the United States of America.

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At 00:00:54,980, Character said: With enough pavement for three round
trips to the moon.

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At 00:00:59,340, Character said: The decades -long struggle leaves some
ruined and some dead.

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At 00:01:06,220, Character said: But the unsung visionaries behind the
highway stop at nothing to make it a

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At 00:01:11,400, Character said: reality. He saw road building as a holy
act.

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At 00:01:15,400, Character said: I need to fix this.

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At 00:01:18,510, Character said: He knew why roads really mattered.

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At 00:01:22,090, Character said: This is the untold story of America's
road warriors.

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At 00:01:26,630, Character said: It wasn't until you had a highway system
that Americans felt truly free.

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At 00:01:58,380, Character said: In the aftermath of World War I, United
States automobile manufacturers quickly

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At 00:02:03,180, Character said: switched from supporting the war effort
to once again producing cars.

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At 00:02:07,520, Character said: Car ownership quadruples from what it
was before the war.

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At 00:02:12,620, Character said: Households all over the country have
cars now.

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At 00:02:15,820, Character said: Ninety percent of roads are still just
dirt, and those that aren't are paved

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At 00:02:20,840, Character said: with a layer of loose rocks and gravel.

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At 00:02:23,260, Character said: Roads were filled with potholes.

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At 00:02:26,080, Character said: They were filled with tree stumps, mud
during the wet seasons, dust during the

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At 00:02:30,760, Character said: dry seasons. You needed a shovel. You
needed a patch kit.

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At 00:02:34,760, Character said: You would need all sorts of gear to get
you to and from your destination. It was

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At 00:02:39,500, Character said: an adventure.

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At 00:02:42,140, Character said: While one road, the Lincoln Highway,
stretches across the United States, most

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At 00:02:47,320, Character said: cities aren't connected, and interstate
travel must be done by ship or train.

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At 00:02:52,710, Character said: Farmers couldn't get their produce to
cities. It cost more to ship over

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At 00:02:58,990, Character said: roads a bushel of peaches just 20 miles
away than it did to ship

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At 00:03:05,790, Character said: them on the railroad 3 ,000 miles away.

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At 00:03:12,030, Character said: In 1916, Congress passes the Federal Aid
Highway Act, which offers some of the

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At 00:03:17,570, Character said: first national funding for roads.

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At 00:03:20,040, Character said: but it's not nearly enough for suitable
highways.

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At 00:03:23,600, Character said: There were no national roads. Most roads
were built by locals.

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At 00:03:28,380, Character said: If you were a farmer and your farm had
frontage along a road, you g***t out there

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At 00:03:33,780, Character said: once a year with a bunch of your
employees, and you maintained that piece

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At 00:03:37,340, Character said: road.

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At 00:03:43,840, Character said: In Iowa, a local highway commissioner,
Thomas McDonald, is thinking bigger.

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At 00:03:49,960, Character said: Thomas MacDonald grew up in Iowa.

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At 00:03:52,400, Character said: He witnessed as a boy working in his
father's feed and lumber store

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At 00:03:58,980, Character said: what farmers were experiencing, their
crops rotting before they could get to

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At 00:04:05,920, Character said: market. For Thomas MacDonald, building
roads is really personal.

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At 00:04:10,940, Character said: Farmers don't have the luxury to sit
around and dream of an idea. They

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At 00:04:15,460, Character said: have to turn their ideas into reality
right away or they don't have a farm

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At 00:04:19,480, Character said: year. And I think Thomas McDonald took
that attitude into his job.

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At 00:04:25,240, Character said: And he saw his road building crusade as
the only way to bring a better life to

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At 00:04:31,140, Character said: these people.

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At 00:04:32,300, Character said: But McDonald doesn't just want better
roads.

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At 00:04:35,500, Character said: He's obsessed with roads that connect.

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At 00:04:39,200, Character said: allowing people and products to move
anywhere in the country.

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At 00:04:48,820, Character said: And in 1919, McDonald gets the chance to
make his pitch when he's appointed

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At 00:04:53,960, Character said: chief of the Federal Bureau of Public
Roads.

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At 00:04:57,560, Character said: This country needs a highway system, but
we all know that states can't afford to

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At 00:05:02,160, Character said: pay for it.

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At 00:05:03,450, Character said: Building all throughout time, whether it
was the Roman Empire or whether it was

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At 00:05:07,730, Character said: Napoleon, all of those empires built
from the top down. You can only overcome

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At 00:05:12,970, Character said: local obstacles if you have a strong
federal force.

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At 00:05:16,710, Character said: The federal government needs to provide
more funding.

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At 00:05:20,470, Character said: 50 -50.

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At 00:05:22,830, Character said: It's an investment in the future growth
of the United States of America.

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At 00:05:30,890, Character said: Where do we begin?

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At 00:05:39,500, Character said: McDonald helps convince Congress to pass
the 1921 Federal Highway Act, which

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At 00:05:45,100, Character said: dwarfs the 1916 Act, offering states
nearly a billion dollars in today's

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At 00:05:51,260, Character said: The bill requires 60 % of the funds to
be spent on interstate highways, the

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At 00:05:56,720, Character said: first step toward achieving McDonald's
vision of a complete national grid.

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At 00:06:01,760, Character said: Another new innovation, the first
standardized rules of the road.

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At 00:06:11,240, Character said: Road safety, pretty much non -existent.
A lot of accidents due to cross traffic.

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At 00:06:16,820, Character said: A lot of rear -enders that did not end
happily back then. That wasn't an

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At 00:06:20,160, Character said: accident you necessarily walked away
from.

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At 00:06:22,000, Character said: Cars kill over 20 ,000 Americans each
year, with more than a billion in

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At 00:06:27,560, Character said: damage. They realized we need to have a
unified standard for the color signs

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At 00:06:33,840, Character said: should be, how large the font should be,
what shape should be.

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At 00:06:40,040, Character said: One of the earliest stop signs was
diamond -shaped, others circular, until

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At 00:06:46,880, Character said: If you can make all stop signs the same
number of sides, an octagon, then at

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At 00:06:52,440, Character said: night you can see an octagon coming up
and you can know, okay, I need to slow

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At 00:06:56,340, Character said: down.

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At 00:06:57,920, Character said: Most stop signs were painted yellow, and
then they came up with paint that would

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At 00:07:02,360, Character said: be reflective.

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At 00:07:03,440, Character said: That's when it became standard across
the country for everyone to use an

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At 00:07:07,220, Character said: octagonal red stop sign.

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At 00:07:10,440, Character said: Driving isn't just unsafe.

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At 00:07:13,600, Character said: It's also confusing.

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At 00:07:16,200, Character said: Roads were disconnected. They were
barely known about.

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At 00:07:19,500, Character said: There weren't any maps, really, to speak
of. There were no numbers telling you

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At 00:07:23,240, Character said: where to go.

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At 00:07:23,920, Character said: To sort out the chaos, in 1926, McDonald
establishes the numbered highway system

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At 00:07:29,740, Character said: to make cross -country travel easier.

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At 00:07:32,480, Character said: They started on the East Coast, where
most people lived.

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At 00:07:35,600, Character said: North -south highways are odd numbers,
and east -west highways are even.

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At 00:07:41,140, Character said: And then the smallest numbers started in
the northeast and worked their way out.

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At 00:07:49,660, Character said: Roads also become a huge source of
employment in America.

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At 00:07:54,180, Character said: For McDonald, that's a win.

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At 00:07:56,940, Character said: Now this is a man who would roll into
town and be greeted like a king.

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At 00:08:01,000, Character said: He'd be put up at the best hotels, he'd
be given food.

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At 00:08:04,780, Character said: Everybody wanted his attention because
they wanted roads.

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At 00:08:12,300, Character said: For the next few years, progress is slow
and steady.

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At 00:08:17,260, Character said: Over 10 ,000 miles of highway are laid
down, but it's still a far cry from the

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At 00:08:22,780, Character said: interstate highway system McDonald
envisions.

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At 00:08:25,980, Character said: McDonald isn't satisfied.

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At 00:08:28,480, Character said: He has yet to realize his goal of cities
actually connected. The big idea, the

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At 00:08:34,120, Character said: big picture, it has not yet come
together.

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At 00:08:36,820, Character said: And by the end of the decade, McDonald
faces a setback that could kill his plan

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At 00:08:42,179, Character said: for good.

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At 00:08:47,740, Character said: The stock market crash of 1929 not only
results in the...