Highly specialized pleasure vehicles with every convenience of home!? Cargo rockets!? Nuclear tunnel melters!? Cantilevered mountain highways?! …man the days when driving and highways were – literally – paving the path to a Utopian future.
Today, of course, they are mainly the bane of urban and suburban living. Most people I know will avoid driving during rush hour if they can avoid it. Regardless, the vision and imagination that inspired the highway landscapes of the future is an amazing artifact. In some ways it is sad to see how much less ambitious we are, but I suppose we are less gullible, too. I mean, look at the trouble we have just updating the Bay Bridge: 20 years after Loma Prieta, an $8 billion price tag, and we still can’t get it right. One day!