OK, scratch that last one.

For drivers in Raleigh and points west, the trip is a journey of at least 160 miles through several small towns and cities along one of Eastern North Carolina’s main arteries. It’s a stop-and-go ride, thanks to years of development along the asphalt corridor. It’s enough to make drivers long for the futuristic days of “The Jetsons,” when our flying cars will someday take us over stoplights rather than under them.

For now, though, it’s a ride the state is hoping to speed up.

Decades ago, the trip took drivers through the very heart of towns like Goldsboro and Kinston. That meant stopping at a lot of downtown intersections and waiting around in traffic. The solution? An ambitious construction program which created four-lane bypasses around the old U.S. 70, often still marked today with the “business route” signs.

Decades later, it’s the bypasses that look like business routes. A lack of control of highway access points led developers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of these new roads by cluttering them with shops, businesses and housing developments, each one with its own driveway and, in many cases, a traffic light.

Today, there are 67 traffic lights along U.S. 70 from Raleigh to the coast, and it adds an average of 90 minutes to the drive. The drive through Havelock is a prime example, with more than a dozen traffic lights along the five-mile stretch.

The vision for a true bypass is simple: a shimmering ribbon of Interstate-quality highway that runs all the way to Beaufort without a single traffic light to slow motorists down.

“It can be a pain,” says Serena Roberson, who commutes from New Bern to Morehead City for work at a doctor’s office. “It usually takes me about 45 or 50 minutes, which I’m used to. But it would be nice to go all the way without a red light.”

It’s been a problem all over the state, says the North Carolina Turnpike Authority. Since 1980, traffic on N.C. roads has jumped 37 percent, while the Department of Transportation has only increased the number of traffic lanes by 5 percent.

While the vision may be simple, the implementation has been a slow and painful process. The two biggest obstacles have been finding a way to pay for all these new miles of highway and how to reassure the communities that depend on U.S. 70 that they won’t see their economies dry up as soon as the new roads open.

And while some are still against the proposed bypass, even the most vocal opponents have come to accept that fighting the N.C. Department of Transportation is like wrestling an 800-pound gorilla.

In Havelock, for instance, the local government is already counting on the bypass in planning for city roads and traffic well into the future. Many residents don’t seem to mind. “I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal,” says Ross Pereira, a Craven County resident who commutes to Havelock along U.S. 70 every day. “If anything, it’ll be easier to get around town. It might hurt a few gas stations, but from what I can tell, most businesses in Havelock are supported locally anyway.”

There is some cause for concern, however. Following a recent bypass project on U.S. 264 to the north around Wilson, several restaurant and hotel owners complained about a noticeable drop in business.

On U.S. 70, the work is already well under way. A bypass has already been up and running around Smithfield, and work started a year ago on a bypass around Clayton, one of the most congested sections of the route. Bypasses are also planned for Kinston, Goldsboro, Havelock and Morehead City, all of which the state hopes to have opened over the next decade.

But all this building won’t be cheap. The estimated price tag for the entire renovation of the U.S. 70 corridor: just shy of $1 billion. Most of the funding is going to have to come from tax dollars earmarked for road construction, dollars that are fought over like table scraps by communities in every part of the state. Others have also floated the idea of building some of the new bypasses as toll roads, with mixed responses from the communities. Similar projects have already been planned with roadwork in other parts of the state. It might not happen, though, as recent studies suggest that toll roads around Kinston, Goldsboro and Havelock just wouldn’t be economically viable.

Regardless of how it gets paid for, this time the state wants to do it right. Officials plan to limit access to the new routes to on and off ramps, so that the next half-century won’t see a new generation having to bypass the bypasses all over again. That’s where the communities can play a big role, says David Wasserman, an engineer with the DOT. And many in these communities are already coming together to do just that.

“Super 70” is a group that’s composed of community leaders, engineers and DOT board members with an eye on keeping the various bypass projects running as smoothly and painlessly as possible. “We don’t really want to keep having to add traffic signals,” DOT engineer Laura Cove says. “This is going to take everyone working together.”

If everyone is on the same page, then the hope is that “Super 70” could be a reality by the end of the next decade. That means that soon, you might be able to make it from Raleigh to the Crystal Coast on a modern superhighway with a blissful 70 mph speed limit the entire way.

Unless we get our flying cars by then.