Full Throttle Ahead

In past decades, pessimists delighted in predicting that the U.S.'s automobile explosion would eventually overtake the country's highway system and bring traffic to a full stop. They did not allow for U.S. enterprise. On the East Coast, the continent's most congested traffic corridor and the world's biggest urban sprawl, a motorist can now whip along the 435-mile route between Washington and Boston without ever encountering a stop light.

This Detroit daydream come true was made possible last week by the opening of a new superhighway that bypasses "Gasoline Alley," an elevenmile stretch of road south of Hartford with 18 stop lights and heavy local traffic, lined on both sides with aluminum diners, neon-lit drive-ins and stucco motels.

Elsewhere, the road ahead looks equally bright. There is not a single stop light on the highways linking Cleveland to Boston (650 miles), St. Louis to Wichita Falls, Texas (658), and Macon, Ga., to Miami (580). The record for uninterrupted travel between major cities, however, still belongs to the New York-to-Chicago stretch. For 845 miles --through the connecting expressways and turnpikes of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois-there is nothing to make a motorist brake except fatigue, an emptying gas tank, a toll station, or a state trooper.

The West, which is still a few paces behind in the interstate highway race, is closing fast. In the 1970s, a relentless roadrunner will be able to travel nearly 1,500 miles from Vancouver to Tijuana without ever seeing red.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.