> > you are kidding, right? > i am almost envisioning a "large, mostly empty" highway from Boston to NYC > ( i guess that should count for "major towns", eh? ).
The Atlantic corridor is not representative of the US as a whole. But the point is that since the Eisenhower administration created the Interstate Highway System (designed for an average road speed of 80Mph) travel by road for long distances has been a reasonable low-cost option in the USA. Try travelling along the A6 in the UK sometime. That's one of the original major road routes in the UK (hence the single-digit number). For quite a lot of it's length it is a two-lane road (not two lanes each way; two lanes in total) with no overtaking. Get stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle and you'll be sitting there for miles.
