TRANSPORT: Glory Road

As every Sunday driver knows, U. S. roads have not kept pace with U. S. cars. Motorists long for high-speed roadways—without steep hills, sharp turns, crossroads, bottlenecks. This week, with the opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, some of them got what they wanted.

Gospel-minded localry call the Pennsylvania Turnpike “the glory road.” For 160 miles between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh it stabs through the Appalachians, piercing ridge after ridge in a series of spectacular tunnels. These seven tunnels, part of Andrew Carnegie’s half-built South Penn Railroad, were just what the engineer ordered.

The longest uniformly planned road in the U. S., the Pennsylvania Turnpike has no curves to speak of; its almost imperceptible jogs could be taken without hazard at 90 m.p.h. For 70% of its way it is straight as a die; one 13-mile stretch marches as unwaveringly as a Roman road. Its steepest grade is 3%.

A 10-ft. centre strip, soon to be hedged with small fir trees, divides the four lanes into two. No signboards mar the way or confuse the eye—its only borders are the misty, pine-edged hillsides of the Alleghenies. Ten smart Esso stations, finished Pennsylvania-Dutch fashion in native wood and stone, specialize in restroom toilet seats sterilized by ultraviolet ray after every use.

For its shiny new super-highway the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania paid not one cent. The Turnpike Commission, appointed by Democratic Governor George Earle, got $29,250,000 from PWA, and a $40,800,000 loan from RFC. Tough, driving, sixtyish Walter Adelbert Jones, commission chairman, set a construction deadline at July 1, 1940 (to get the PWA grant), sent “cats” and bulldozers racing over Appalachian slopes like Nazi tanks in the Ardennes, ordered concrete flushed over roadbeds that had been given scarcely the winter to settle. The road was completed in 21 months. There was no fanfare this week as the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened for business. President Roosevelt had been invited to say a few words, but a Republican Commission, fearing a “nonpolitical” address, deferred dedication ceremonies until after Election Day.