Frank Lautenberg: “the suburbs have become the residential location of choice, and traffic patterns have shifted accordingly. I have seen…”

“the suburbs have become the residential location of choice, and traffic patterns have shifted accordingly. I have seen it, once again, in my own State, and I have seen it in bordering States, where a new highway will be built which is designed to serve traffic that exists there and traffic that might develop. Within no time--and I say this, again, coming from the most densely populated State in the Union--in no time, there are traffic jams on those highways, be it Highway 78, Highway 24 or Highway 80. I can give you the list of highways that were built which looked like they were the highways of the future and, before you know it, they are the highways of yesterday, because people took advantage of the opportunity to move out of town: ``Let's get out of here.'' It hasn't spoken very well of our urban policy, I will tell you that, because what happened in the grand design that emerged in the early fifties by my former commander in chief, also the commander in chief of the Senator from Rhode Island, then became President, was a system for national highway transportation that had an unfortunate consequence.”