The costly freedom of the open road

Five European road systems empirically compared

Image: Atop the summit of the Bernina pass in southern Switzerland. The snow is peach-coloured owing to large quantities of sand blown up from the Sahara Desert. (Photo by the author.)

In the closing scene of Steven Spielberg’s (yes, him again) 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future, as Doc, Marty and his girlfriend settle themselves into the DeLorean, with Marty warning that they may not have enough road to get up to the prescribed 88 miles per hour in order to enter time travel mode, Doc dons his goggles and says with a tone of gleeful mystery, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” Whereupon the vehicle lifts off and shoots away into the sky before disappearing with a swoosh into 2015.

Twenty-fifteen was nearly ten years ago now, so, we might ask (and millions of BTTF fans certainly have and still continue to ask), how did the real 2015 match up to Spielberg’s take on what it would be and, in particular, did they need roads where they were going?