The Highway and the City

o THOSE WHO HAVE ENCOCMERED modern ur ban traffic congestion (and who hasn't?), it may provide some small comfort to learn thai the problem is at least as old as ancient Rome.Gaius Julius Caesar won fame as general, states man, and author -but he was also something of a traffic engineer, and not by choice.Traffic snarls were so acute in the market place of Imperial Rome and around the Circus Maximum that Caesar was forced to bar all except pedestrian traffic for the ten hours after sunrise.He also found it necessary to institute one-way streets and abolish downtown parking.Man> of today's city traffic woes had their Roman counterparts.Instead of smog, ihere were clouds of dust and swarms of insects.Instead of auto horns, there were the clatter of horses' hoofs and the roar of chariot wheels on stone pavement.Even the alleged modern problem of the woman driver was known to ancient Rome: Lady charioteers were not permitted to drive in the city on Sundays or during times of heavy traffic.Down through history urban roads have been plagued by these and similar difficulties as men have sought to devise efficient and convenient means o£ moving people and goods.Roads have always been essential to the growth of the city-roads to bear char iots, horses and buggies, bicycles, and, finally, auto mobiles, buses, and trucks.In the United States, as indeed throughout much of the world, the motor vehicle and the modern high way network developed like Siamese twins, each utterly dependent on the other.Previously inaccessi ble tracts of land were now bound to the town by road systems and rapidly filled in with homes and businesses.When towns became crowded, residents used the freedom of movement made possible by the private automobile to set up housekeeping in the suburbs and exurbs.The degree to which Americans have taken ad vantage of this freedom can be seen in the fantastic growth of our metropolitan regions.In 1940 these