HIGHWAYS: Ohio Express

In 1796 Ebenezer Zane, a hardy Marylander, contracted to clear a bridle path across lower Ohio in return for a land grant of 3 sq. mi.—a transaction authorized by Congress and executed by President George Washington (who owned vast tracts in eastern Ohio himself). Part of Zane’s Trace became in time the National Road (now U.S. Highway 40), which linked the East with the wide-open Midwest and helped populate Ohio with a swarm of new settlers (250,000 in ten years alone). Last week, some 100 miles to the north, Ohio completed a new kind of link between East and Midwest: the 241-mile, $326 million Ohio Turnpike.

Even before its formal opening, the Ohio Turnpike held records. It is the longest stretch of superhighway ever completed at one time; of all the major postwar U.S. turnpike projects, it is the first ever finished entirely on schedule and within its cost estimates. Unexpectedly, the Turnpike Commission ended up with money to spare, although construction ran to $1,350,000 per mile (seeding grass alone cost $5,200,000).

Blackstone Boulevard. Ohio’s project was inspired largely by the phenomenal success of the prewar Pennsylvania Turnpike. Yet the state legislature voted against it in 1947, approved it in 1949 by a single Senate vote only after bitter debate.

The state invested little cash in the Turnpike Commission. When the turnpike bonds went on the market in 1952, private investors, looking toward revenues from tolls, bought up the entire $326 million in one day. Before the market closed that day, the commission’s $1,000 tax-exempt 3¼% bonds commanded a $25 premium. But the project was still plagued by delays, and so many obstructive lawsuits that one attorney wryly suggested paving the roadway with law! books and naming it Blackstone Boulevard. No concrete was poured at all for the first four years. Then in late 1953, an army of roadmaking machines began to roll on two ten-hour daily shifts, and the turnpike shot across Ohio at a rate sometimes exceeding one mile a day.

Nine Seconds to See. As projected, the Ohio Turnpike would have startled U.S. motorists with a big switch: fast cars in the outside right lane and slow traffic in the left lanes, and service facilities on the center strip rather than the roadsides. The commission turned down these innovations. As built, the turnpike is simply an ordinary, superb superhighway.

Photoelectric eyes and electronic machines automatically tot up toll charges (top: $3 for an auto, $30 for a 40-ton truck). The 16 service plazas provide both king-size picnic areas and kid-size playgrounds. All signs have 16-in. letters legible at 900 ft.—enough for a 9-sec. reading at 65 m.p.h., the speed limit. All bridges have been built as separate twin structures; in all, overpasses span four major rivers, 38 streams, 41 railroad crossings and 282 other roadways. Result: a saving of nearly 3½ hours’ driving time across Ohio.

Maine to Mexico? The new highway—skirting Akron, Cleveland and Toledo—connects the Pennsylvania Turnpike with the one now being built across northern Indiana. By next fall motorists and truckers will be able to drive 812 miles, from Manhattan to Chicago’s outskirts, without running into a single traffic light or crossroad. Total toll charges: $10.45.

Ohio expects 14 million vehicles the first year, and eventually an annual revenue of $35 million—enough to pay off the bonds by 1972, a good 20 years ahead of time. However, as in Pennsylvania, the turnpike revenue will probably be plowed back into more toll roads across Ohio. Two more pay-as-you-go projects are coming up next: a spur from Cleveland, connecting with the New York Thruway at Erie, Pa., and a major lateral across the state toward Cincinnati and St. Louis.

Overall, in 22 states, a network of toll roads built or planned is now webbing fast across a vast segment of the U.S. from Northeast to Southwest. In 1950 all U.S. toll roads together ran to only 439 miles. The total has since expanded enormously; as of this week 1,712 miles are in use, 1,527 under construction and 5,622 more planned. Total cost: $10.7 billion, repayable by road users directly at no cost to taxpayers generally. By 1965, highway experts predict, motorists will be riding nonstop—for a price—on turnpikes from Chicago to Miami, from the East Coast to Omaha, and from Fort Kent, on Maine’s Canadian border, to the edge of Mexico.