19. Highways
When Henry Ford inspected the meatpacking plants in Chicago, the automated process of slaughtering, skinning, and butchering cattle and hogs impressed him. Ford noted the work moving to the worker in a continuous line, with each worker performing a small piece of the overall process. He adapted the process to the assembly lines in his automobile plants, and gave much of the credit to the Chicago meatpacking industry. By the 1910s his mass-produced Model T changed the manner in which people commuted and traveled for pleasure. Chicago city planners recognized the need to accommodate automobiles with better roads and streets.
In 1927, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Chicago Plan Commission outlined a network of freeways, with limited access, branching out from the city center to its outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. The famous Lake Shore Drive emerged from the plans, and when it opened in 1933 served as a prototype for similar limited access routes in American cities. The Great Depression and World War II impeded progress on the plan, though once the war ended the projects moved forward with a vengeance. Throughout the 1950s, steady progress changed Chicago’s roadways. The better roads with easy access to industries and warehouses carried shipping formerly the province of the railroads, and the convenience of automobile traffic robbed passengers from the railways.