Word: expressway
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Since 1956, when Congress authorized the program, federal and state agencies have poured $23.3 billion into the economy for land, labor, construction materials and equipment. Real estate prices along the roads have risen as much as thirtyfold, putting adjoining land among the nation's most expensive property. Around expressway interchanges and exits, new motels, restaurants, gas stations, shopping centers and even office buildings have sprung...
...trouble is "downtown." Where cities prize the idea of a distinct center, or where they are locked into it by topography, as in New York City or San Francisco, the congestion of building at the center vastly increases the difficulty of applying the principles-divided lanes, cloverleafs -of the expressway. Where cities have ample room and are indifferent to the idea of "downtown," expressways can be shaped in belts, loops and spokelike patterns that solve most traffic problems. Houston is one such city, and it smugly considers its traffic headaches to be negligible...
...truly congested cities, the expanses of concrete built to unclog traffic are often jammed almost from the moment they open. The Long Island Expressway, designed for 80,000 by 1970, now carries up to 170,000 a day; and the Hollywood Freeway, intended for 120,000 by 1970, now conveys nearly twice that many. "This is the only business where, if you have record crowds the first day, you consider it a failure," says Chicago's Project Supervisor Patrick J. Athol. To technophobes, this proves the futility of building roads-but that is something like not building schools...
...traffic-jam trauma is under attack. For example, Detroit's John C. Lodge Expressway is testing an ingenious control system. Fourteen TV cameras, mounted on bridges over a particularly congested three-mile stretch, transmit pictures of cars to a 14-screen big-brother console near by. Technicians at the console can zoom in their lenses for closeup shots of any single suspicious vehicle; on several occasions they have watched on television while a smashup or a breakdown occurs. Then they call a policeman and throw switches that change speed-limit signs, block ramps, and turn...
...dozen or so of the U.S.'s 224 cities of over 50,000 population, the answer to the traffic problem is clear: more expressways. As E. H. Holmes, planning director of the U.S. Bureau of Roads, says, "Congestion isn't peaking up any more; it's spreading." Little more than 5% of all metropolitan traffic in most cities is bound for the downtown area; most of it is skirting the city. And for such as New York and San Francisco, the answer lies mainly in more mass transit facilities (although New York is preparing to build...