 When the decision was made to proceed with the Merritt in the 1930s, it became the most ambitious and expensive highway project ever in U.S. history. Putting on his transportation engineer hat for a moment, Richard says planners needed to be thinking about creating a system for getting vehicles from one point to another. Or, as stated in the infamous movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. You build a road like this, you attract a lot of traffic.