Nation: Enough Roads?

In California, the citadel of the automobile culture, the state's highway budget for 1976 was presented last week, and it turned out to contain the lowest outlay for new construction since the 1950s. Road-building crews are to lay only 77 miles of state freeways and expressways, down from an annual aver age of 280 miles over the past eight years. Gasoline taxes that fund the highways are off because of higher gas prices, lower speed limits and less thirsty cars. And inflation boosted highway construction costs in the state by a staggering 60% last year. California, in the unique way it has so often managed to do in the past, may be trying to tell the whole country something.