The Open Road

Six years after Congress passed the Highway Beautification Act, the Federal Government has finally served notice that it will be enforced. Transportation Secretary John Volpe has begun informing state Governors that they will lose 10% of their federal highway subsidies if they fail to remove billboards along certain federally funded roads within the next year.

It may be years before all of the flashy asphalt art yields to nature and government. Advertisers can still erect their jumbo signs 660 feet from federally aided roads. Besides, any company that loses a billboard can buy it back and replant it elsewhere. Thus billboards could come to resemble the traveling hucksters of an earlier America, always one step ahead of the law.

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