During the past month I've taken several road trips across the mountains to eastern Washington. One thing I noticed is that the state highways I followed in many places were quite nice two-lane affairs that could be driven at near-freeway speeds.
They had wide shoulders, a useful safety factor. Their paving was in good condition. There were plenty of cuts-and-fills that helped isolate the roads from their terrain. Perhaps the most interesting detail was that towns were bypassed -- especially smaller towns. Because of that, motorists had fewer reduced speed zones and traffic lights to deal with, again speeding up a journey's flow.
Contrast this with many such roads of 60 and more years ago. Those were built cheaply, conforming more to the terrain. They were narrower (as were cars back then) and had small or nonexistent shoulders. They went through every town, each a potential speed trap.
And some did not go from place to place directly. Instead they went along borders of farmers' lands, tracing their way confined to a grid pattern.
Finally, since there were few superhighways, state and federal highways had to accommodate all the traffic -- cars, busses, trucks, military convoys, etc. -- that had to get from place to place. That potential congestion is much less on many modern country roads and highways.
All it took was decade after decade of small improvements.
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