Everything Rides on the Roads (1970s)

[Music] oh a [Music] the place a small town near the Great Smoky Mountains the man Zach Massie remembering back more than 80 years and my father grew to Backa and he had to go to Asheville to Market and uh it took him two days to go to Asheville we got from crab tree from Fines Creek to Canton in one day and then from Canon to Asheville the next day and sold his toaca the next day and took five days to go from there to Ash and back how far was that uh about 40 miles how fast can you do it today well you can go from here to Asheville and 35 40 minutes lot of difference a lot of difference yes there are a lot of differences between the America of today and the America of Zach massie's Boyhood within the span of a single lifetime we have literally moved mountains to build the world's finest Highway System including the shorter safer route he now takes to Asheville and this road Network the backbone of our transportation system has had a profound effect on all our Our Lives whether we live in quiet little country towns or in the more heavily populated metropolitan areas our road system makes possible a bountiful array of choices an almost Limitless range of goods as like a giant Nationwide conveyor belt our roadways provide Swift efficient passage for products from from any one part of the country to another America's tremendous productivity yields a rich and varied Caravan a continuous outpouring of goods Goods the majority of people on Earth are still only hoping to attain our products roll off the assembly lines and keep right on rolling to waiting customers over a system whose importance we seldom [Music] considered we are so accustomed to the big haulers which bring cattle and Hogs to market now that we find it hard to believe how livestock traveled to the packing house in Zach massie's youth be a Cattleman come through buying up cattle you see and Hogs and he had employed me one time to help him drive we had to drive him 18 miles to cide over these muddy roads Hogs lay down in the road in the mud hole in water and get up and go on you know and so we'd get in there about about uh 5:00 in the afternoon and I did all that for 50 cents then had to walk back home that night back then as today some goods and passengers traveled on America's navigable w waterways with the emphasis now being on bulk Commodities such as grain or on fuel such as coal and oil along with ores and other raw materials San Francisco may find it hard to relinquish its sentimental attachment to cable cars but newer modes of mass transit are now serving thousands of Bay Area Shoppers and commuters and other metropolitan areas daily meet the ch challenge of transporting thousands over relatively short distances on the longer runs Amtrak and commuter trains concentrate on meeting passenger needs however most railroads today move Freight so that even when goods are carried by another means of Transit the relationship between highways and other forms of transportation is apparent the package that goes on the Railroad Flat Car is equally at home on the road and highways provide the connection between manufacturing plants and their shipping facilities or between a ship and customers on Shore Air Freight is also likely to travel Road Lanes as well as airlanes and air Travelers familiar with the fact that airports tend to be far out places are also aware of the essential EarthBound links in the chain for while each is important in its own right all are ultimately dependent upon our highway system all must ultimately acknowledge the basic nature of the downto earth Network through which the throbbing pulse the life blood of Commerce largely flows a part of that Commerce ends up on our tables and thanks to our highway system we eat better than any other nation in the world enjoying a variety of fresh crisp produce produce which is usually only minutes away from the growing Fields when it takes to the road produce which is rushed to Consumers all across the country while it is still tasty and packed with nutrition hey good bud this here's Humpty Dumpty head not for Big D I want you to give me plenty of room I got a qu million eggs on board I don't want any crack UPS 10 full Cold Storage eggs once made the first meal of the day an unappetizing one but not anymore the hens of Arkansas now have a highway connection with a breakfast plates of America and Cold Storage eggs are a thing of the past and this intricate and vital network not only provides for the movement of goods but also for delivery to the door in many cases no matter how out of the way a destination may be it affords easy accessibility over almost any kind of terrain and provides for convenient and dependable Connections in short no other method of transportation quite Compares with the one which gets almost anything almost anywhere as every everything rides on the [Music] roads like the man said you got that product likely a trucker brought it to you if our highway system can be and often is taken for granted it is seldom by the truckers by the men such as George Miller who know firsthand the effect which the improvements in roads during the last 10 or 20 years have had on on them as individuals saves a lot a lot of money I mean saves fuel I'll say with these interstate highways I'll say you save 40 gallon fuel run between here and Chicago when I stop the start because you stop the start it takes more fuel but after you're rolling get your rolling speed your 55 M hour with this Federal loog re fires you can just hold and set and hold that all day long no problem but the roads is good the roads ain't bouncy you don't break up your equip you don't tear up your tars you don't bust your tars up you don't tear your transmission up your engine up you just keep running steady speed all day long for instance I'm a meat man when we bring the meat to your family in Philadelphia or New York area you're getting fresh meat you know get meat been lay around for a few days when I bring it to the butcher you have a fresh meat out of the way you used to leave on sats you get there to get in Chicago Monday morning but now we can we can eat dinner at home on Sunday and be there for Monday morning a that's no comparison between the roads today and the old roads the old roads are very dangerous half the place when he broke down in the olden days you couldn't even get to the side but today you get on the side of these roads they have cut offs they got some of the finnest rest areas ever was on these roads [Music] [Music] today it Miller's experience has been gained from 45 years of making a living on the road Good morning George morning how you doing come here so late had night night how come what happened well I don't want to say have breakfast or just C no just cough okay thank you but most of us don't put in quite that much time getting acquainted with highway conditions Nationwide true two out of 10 American families move every year often to improve their standards of living but it is unlikely that they give much credit to ease of travel for making possible a wider choice of career opportunities it's even doubtful if during vacations many of us give any particular thought to the fact that our present Roads Take us to places where Generations before us could only dream of going to enjoy sites Americans once could only read about or yearn to see n [Music] n [Music] n [Music] most of the traveling most of us due is not to some dazzling vacation spot however most of it is the day after day after day kind the Stop and Go fundamentals of going to town to shop or driving back and forth to work but if our road system has given us a choice of Lifestyles freeing many workers from living in the shadows of the factories it has also been a two-way [Music] street a two-way street headed toward everybody's all-time favorite destination for whether we're driving a rental from the airport or using the family car all the way it is always the highway which leads the way back home are you hry that [Music] turkey [Music] turkey am well how was the roads oh they were pretty good up until about 20 mi south of Cleveland there society as well as the family responds to our human need to gather together to care and to share and all of the big events all of the choices Society offers are dependent on the highway system both to gather the groups together and to disperse them afterwards [Music] who we are what we are is interwoven with the roads that bring us together with the memorable events of Amer Happening Here and [Music] Now a Small Town Festival a county fair or a Marty [Music] gr the differences are only those of degree for we are social beings and whatever our social problem we move more often toward one another than away gathering together in celebration seeking to rise above whatever interferes with a sense of [Music] community but however High We may s St wherever the Winds of chance may carry us when we come back to earth we will end up on whatever kind of Road system we have had the foresight to provide for and unfortunately there may be some stormy going [Music] ahead for anyone who thinks that our highway system can be taken for granted that we're traveling on easy street is dangerously close to being all wet both for our personal safety and for Urgent economic reasons we must be prepared to protect a tremendous asset a road system in which we have a multi-billion dollar investment we must be willing to keep the good roads good and to make the bad roads better to keep America rolling for in spite of all the demands we make on it our Road system is inadequate nowhere near what it ought to be 40 years ago when we had slightly more than 3 million miles of Highways we had about 30 million Vehicles today we still have only about 3 million plus miles in the system but we have more than 140 million Vehicles more than four times as much traffic on about the same number of miles of Road that's right most of our highways have been around for more than 50 years and most of the bridges we cross were built in the era of the Great Depression they are narrow inadequate and sometimes ready to fall in if they haven't [Music] already safety research studies indicate that one out of five Highway accidents can be attributed to buil-in death traps such as this buil-in obstacles along the course of horse and buggy Highway still in use in an automotive [Music] age and where an Old Road cannot or at least has not been widened to meet today's traffic needs there seems to be a stopper available for every bottleneck heirlooms can be lovely unless you have to drive on them the features of an Antiquated Road include among other things narrow or non-existent shoulders which make changing attire a death defying act something only the bravest of Good Samaritans would take part in watch out if you have any trouble on a road like this more trouble may be right behind you some of the roads which have been around for too long rise and fall like a roller coaster creating visibility and passing problems potential disaster lurks over the crest of every Hill the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach experienced at the bottom of some of the dips is nothing compared to nothing compared to what some times awaits you at the top of a rise we send our kids out on highways booby trapped with killer corners and curving grades which are unsafe whatever the weather treacherous drop offs lurk within inches of hurtling tires waiting to snag a wheel and sometimes causing skidding even when the road isn't icy [Music] rail crossings as you may have noticed can often be as rough as tank traps real axle Busters which shuck off Mufflers right and left adding to the cost we incur from Bad roads and they do cost counting vehicle wear and tear and increased fuel consumption a road like this costs nearly twice as much per mile nearly twice as much to drive as a safer more comfortable and usually more direct Road such as this one but weather is the great Destroyer as freezing and falling split surfaces [Music] asunder use takes its toll too as wheed FS fall like sledgehammers into potholes or gnaw at broken places for the pounding pounding pounding that our Roads Take is not without its price [Music] it should come as no surprise that our roads are wearing out 50% faster than road crews can repair them and if we suffer from all the jouncing the springs and shock absorbers are often fairing worse Little Wonder that many of the cars still in operation look hardly better than the ones that are not little wonder that the screens around the junkyards cannot hide the fact that our $35 billion a year loss from accident damage is mounting ever higher compounded by the pain and suffering of losses too great to [Music] measure even the interstates safest of all our highways are now upwards of 20 years old some of them and the older ones are in need of repair and resurfacing the interstate system serves and benefits the total population yet it makes up less than 2% of our total Road mileage furthermore until the system is completed some parts of the interstates are only jumping off places unfulfilled Promises of the kinds of safety and usefulness we could be building into our Highway Network today we get our funds for road maintenance and improvements by sharing the costs through a small tax per gallon on motor fuel the idea is that the user foots the bill on a pay as youo basis except that now he doesn't foot the bill not quite inflation is eating away at the funds available for both maintenance and improvements on primary and secondary roads alike eating away at the funds necessary to protect our multi-billion doll investment as a result state and local governments besieged by Rising costs are finding it more and more difficult to provide their share of the money needed to upgrade and maintain the system the urgency of the situation is hammered home by the obvious futility of stop Gap measures we cannot patch our way out of the problem we will either fix them now or fix them later beveled by increasing numbers of injuries and accidents as more of the system crumbles fix them now or fix them later burdened by the rapidly escalating costs of putting off what we know is necessary for if substantial additional funds are not made available soon if what needs to be done is not done then our whole Transportation network will be threatened this is the loom on which the fabric of Our Lives is woven this is the warp and the weft for the way we live whether we are commuting to work conveying our Lifeline of essential goods and services bringing farm products into the distribution centers or simply getting together to enjoy each other's company most of our human exchanges are dependent upon our highway system where we will be tomorrow depends upon it too including the places where we will shop and the places where we will work everything rides on our ability to get wherever we need to be at least as well as and maybe better than we do today everything rides on our willingness to provide additional funds to upgrade and maintain an indispensable system [Music] for the conclusion is inescapable the way to a brighter tomorrow lies in our realization that we must attend to the roads today for everything including the course of our future rides on the roads la [Music]