It’s from an old article, but Eric Jaffe points out this interesting bit of trivia:
Even in the early years of America’s highway construction craze, a few people recognized the folly of placing major roads through the hearts of cities. In her 1970 book Superhighways – Superhoax, Helen Leavitt famously wrote that Dwight Eisenhower, the president who signed the Interstate Highway Act into law, didn’t realize these roads would run through downtown districts until he saw construction of Interstate 95 in Washington, D.C. Officials looked into relocating the system’s urban highways, but by then it was too late.
Never knew that. Though given how development tends to follow Interstates, it’s inevitable that some would end up bisecting cities. The difference would be that they wouldn’t be disrupting an already functioning urban area, which is significant.