The Roads Must Roll

Come down for Blastoff, X-5, 4, 3, 2, X-1, Fire. From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space.

These are stories of the future. Adventures in which you'll live in a million could be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of astounding science fiction presents...

Tonight's story, the Rhodes Must Roll by Robert Heinlein. Here is a hum watch and run. Oh, our job is never done, for our roadways go rolling along. While you ride while you fly, we are watching down inside so your roadways go rolling along.

Or is I high he? The roader men are we. Check off the sectors loud and strong. One, two! Anywhere you go, you are bound to know that your roadways keep rolling along. Keep rolling that your roadways keep rolling along.

It was in the middle 1950s that the automotive age began to die. The traffic engineers had long expected it. For years they had watched our vast cities sprawl and spread out, spill over into the countryside, become more and more dependent on motor transportation.

And then finally, the inevitable breaking point was reached. The growing flood of cars and buses and trucks began to swamp the streets and arterial highways. The building of roads could no longer keep pace. The super highways clogged, congested, became packed with cars, stalled bumper to bumper.

and the cities began to die of slow strangulation, where the traffic could no longer roll. And then the engineers took over. They banned the automobiles, tore up the super highways, and in their place they built the rolling roads, mechanized roads that moved like huge conveyor belts, whirling along on their giant rotors at speeds ranging from 5 to 100 miles an hour,