Lunch at the Lab: "The Road to Happiness"

Join us for Lunch at the Lab with Fionnuala Quinn, transportation engineer, Alta Planning and Design.

Fionnuala will lead us on a fascinating look back at the "Good Roads Movement," the early days of the automobile and major forces behind the creation of our US Highway System. We will watch parts of promotional silent movie produced by Ford Motor Company to encourage Americans to be engaged in the politics behind improving our nations highways in preparation for the coming Age of the Automobile. Fionnuala will share her research on this topic and how these forces continue to shape our national transportation system today.

The Road to Happiness is the title of a film made in 1924 by the Ford Motor Co. mostly in Fairfax County with additional scenes set in Washington DC and Arlington County. In an early scene of this fictionalized story, children walk along a muddy unpaved road to the local schoolhouse. At school, their teacher encourages them to enter the national Good Roads essay contest. One of the students finds inspiration for his essay from a Good Roads Movement speaker at Fairfax City Hall later that evening. In the final scene, happy children walk and skip to their local schoolhouse on a newly paved roadway, a vivid example of the Road to Happiness!

Fionnuala will provide discussion from her research as we watch this 30-minute silent film to gain insight into the ideas of key people who shaped issues that continue to be central in the ongoing conversation about the design of our transportation network. Over lunch, we look forward to enjoying the local details set in the national historical context, while discussing the ongoing relevance today.