Show By DONALD MacDONALD Chances cas and head for cp tbi anywhere Pack your route soon will take you onto a smooth divided highway new four-laDistance melts as you bypass towns duck under intersecting roads and flash by slower traffic Everyone relaxes Host of the little emergencies once part of every trip by car never happen There are no stop lights no sharp curves no steep hills No one can blunder out of a driveway and into your path Problems were engineered out of this road for it is one stretch of the more than 10000miles alNaready completed in our projected 41000-mi- le tional Interstate Highway System Not a bad record for only 4 years especially so when you add another 14500 miles currently under construction and still another 11£00 miles surveyed and designed Almost every city Luge or small will be affected by this network in some way These statistics make some experts proud others' angry In the past few years we have shown the Amer- ne TheAmericar - safety speed anc - lean public that highways can be built which will handle our rising traffic problem" says Bertram D Tallamy Federal highway administrator "The new highways have stimulated industry business hous- ing and recreation and have raised land values New industrial parks new shopping centers new and revitalized central housing developments cities are another plus for the program in an expanding economy” Not so say other highway authorities we are strangling ourselves in concrete and asphalt ribbons they point out A repot by foe National Research Council of foe National Academy of Sciences claims that the nation’s transport system is in a mess Its conclusion: "The transportation system has grown up so haphazardly often without full realization of its economic social and cultural impact that it is in need of almost total review” Who is right? Are we spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars for highways that are as obsolete as the horse and carriage? Or are we building byways that will last as long as the roads of Rome? Those who take the negative view cite Los Angeles county as an example of our "highway strangulation” This area has by far the biggest I M1 L Weakly fabmary 1 1M1 ' f |