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Show VOICE OF THE PEOPLE By Telegram Readers ypati Highway Rated Folly for Salt Lake City Editor, Telegram: If you'll glance at a map of the United States you'll see that Salt Lake la blessed by natural geography geogra-phy and the foresightednees of our pioneers with being the crossroads of the west. Probsbly no city ia the whole nation haa the good fortun to hav so many major highways intersecting inter-secting Inside its residential and commercial boundaries. Good fortune, I mean, for from the vary first yeara of the city's founding a major part of our city's prosperity hsa been du to thst fact. Every car that cornea Into our city from north, west, south or east adda to our prosperity. Our gaa atatlona sell motoring eup-plies, eup-plies, our restaurants and farm-era farm-era and grocery men sell food snd services, our hotels, motels, trailer parks and rooming fibusea sell sccommodatlona, and every , other segment of our city's economy is benefited directly di-rectly or indirectly. Now our beneficent federal government la offering us s pearl handled sword free, or slmost free, thst is 80 free, to commit economic suicide with. The federal government ssvs it will give ua 80 of the cost of a super-dooper fancy by-paaa highway ff we will. but put up the rest of the money and select a route conveniently far removed from all our existing exist-ing hotels, motels, restauranta, service stations, garages, grc-; grc-; eery stores snd ether businesses depending upon the cross-country trsffl for their very existence exist-ence Despite the elaborate surveys sur-veys the highway officials themselves them-selves made and found that only 14 of our local traffic congestion con-gestion would be In anv way effect en by a bvpase highway, They ar persisting in ramming this extremely harmful proposal down our throats. Over the protests pro-tests of the residents sf th westside. eaatside, aouthaide and aorthaide Salt Lakers, they are going ahead with their grandiose plans to make It practically prac-tically Impossible for crosscountry cross-country travelers to stop over tn our city for s meal or a night'a rest or a tank full of gasoline. They tell us that the S p m. traffic Jam on State street and Highland dr. and 21at South will be magically solved by a freeway on eth West stretching stretch-ing from Draper to North Salt Lake. That la ridiculous. The truck that jam State street could be routed along Main or an Inexpensive extension of Second West. But all th 100 mil an hour freeways the government gov-ernment could dump on the west side If It had billions In-stesd In-stesd of millions to throw away would not take one car off Highland High-land dr. Tourists don't use Highland dr. Local residents won't use s cross-country freeway free-way to get from town to their homes on the southeast benches of the city. i Please, before It is too late, the people of Salt Lake muat realize th folly of this proposed pro-posed highway and rise en masse to prevent the ruin of one of our most valuable industries. indus-tries. The tourist industry is 'the on Industry which adda to rather than depletes . our natural resources. C. R. L, Salt Lak City. |