Page:Making Michigan Move.pdf/26

 the program was revised upward to 10 years and $2 billion.

Michigan soon forged to the front among the 50 states in constructing its share of the interstate system. Between 1960 and 1970, nearly 1,000 miles were built, an average of one mile every three or four days. The state was the first to complete a border-to-border interstate—I-94, running 205 miles from Detroit to New Buffalo. Connecting links were completed to other major cities. The last mile of gravel highway on the 9,450-mile state highway system was hard-surfaced early in the decade.

No longer was travel across the state a day-long chore of driving often-crowded, two-lane highways, with slowdowns in every city and village for traffic lights and local traffic.

Travel and the number of vehicles surged upward year after year as two-and three-car families became commonplace and motorists took more and longer trips. Tourism became more and more a year-around industry and commerce and manufacturing, as well as the trucking industry serving them, became heav­ily dependent on good highways. The department adopted a "bare