The Highway Man

As chairman of the New York State Thruway Authority, Bertram D. Tallamy can take credit for building one of the most scenic and safest superroads in the U.S. (2.8 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles). But if Tallamy had it to do all over again, the 427-mile Thruway from New York City to Buffalo would be even better; he says he would avoid all scenically dull stretches, make roadways at least 80 ft. apart, build them at different levels for greater safety and so that oncoming traffic would not spoil the view. Last week Highway Man Tallamy got his chance to put these ideas in effect all over the U.S. President Eisenhower chose him as the Government's first Federal Highway Administrator in charge of its $33 billion program for a coast-to-coast network of superroads.

Bert Tallamy, 54, a civil engineer who spends his winter weekends snowshoeing in the mountains near his West Sand Lake, N.Y. home, has been building public projects ever since he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1925. He got his first job building sewers and water mains in Buffalo, soon after formed his own firm contracting for municipal water systems, dams and sewage-disposal projects in upstate New York. In 1945, when New York embarked on an $800 million public-works program. Governor Thomas E. Dewey asked him to become deputy superintendent of public works in charge of coordinating all the various highway and building projects, quickly moved him up to superintendent of public works and in 1950 put him in charge of the New York State Thruway project.

Completed this year at a cost of $1 billion, the Thruway has proved so popular that the first sections opened in 1954 netted $7,000,000 in tolls on 522 million miles of travel. This year the completed road will take in three times that amount. In his new $20,000-a-year job, which he plans to start early next year, Tallamy will be responsible for one of the most ambitious single public-works projects in history--41,000 miles of superhighways as well as hundreds of miles of spur and connecting roads stretching into every corner of the U.S. Says Highway Administrator Tallamy: "The highway program will not only bring more rapid and safer transportation, but will also lead to a decentralization of industry. All along the new highway system new industries will spring up."

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