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The new superhighways will have a profound effect on the lives of the most mobile people on earth. One out of every seven Americans earns his living in some phase of highway travel; 80% drive to work; 85% take their vacations and pleasure trips by auto. Yet U.S. highways, sadly neglected during World War II, have fallen far behind the growing numbers of automobiles, trucks and buses, now up to 65 million. The new roads will ease present congestion, be able to accommodate the nearly 90 million vehicles that are expected to speed over U.S. roads by 1972. With fewer curves, no crossroads and a wide center strip, the super system is expected to save 3,500 lives annually, reduce accident costs by $725 million, save commercial operators another $825 million by cutting delay, fuel waste, tire and brake wear. It will be designed for safe speeds of up to 70 m.p.h. (today's average highway speeds: passenger cars 51, trucks 46, buses 52). Motorists will be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York over the federal network without passing a single traffic light or intersection.
Over the Swimming Pools. In the nation's economic and social life, the federal program will work far-reaching changes. Burgeoning highways will start new businesses all along their routes; $150 million in new plants has gone up along Massachusetts' six-year-old Route 128, and the recently completed New York State Thruway has already attracted dozens of industries. New towns will grow up around the geometric cloverleafs, and commuters will be able to drive long distances to work at a mile a minute. Highway motels, now growing at the rate of 3,000 a year, will multiply even faster to serve additional millions of Americans who will take to the open road.
While the advance of the ribbons of pavement will benefit the lives of many Americans, it will harshly disrupt the lives of many others. More than 2,000,000 acres of land will have to be bought to make way for the federal highway network alone. Roads will slice through densely populated cities and suburbs, displacing thousands of dwellers. They will cut across thousands of farms from coast to coast, often separating a farmer's house from his fields and forcing him to detour for miles to get from one side of his land to the other. Last week at Encino, Calif., a superhighway bulldozed its way past the front door of Hollywood Actor Edward Everett Horton, burying his tennis court, swimming pool and formal garden. Dozens of California swimming pools, their bottoms knocked out to prevent water from collecting, have been buried far beneath the new roads, a possible puzzle for future archaeologists. A classic case of inconvenience occurred when a new road cut off a farmer's privy from his house, forcing him either to build a new one or make an eightmile. trip and pay a toll. (He built a new one.) In Atlanta, an apartment building is being moved from the path of a new road while tenants continue to live in it with the services of all utilities.