But how many of us reflect on the days before the opening of the M6, when traffic choked Preston, the A6, Lancaster, as well as Garstang and to some extent Longridge?
Thoughts of a national motorway system date back to the early 20th century, and in 1936 the Institute of Highway Engineers published its ideas on the issue.
Around the same time Lancashire County Council was thinking about improving the A6 to A49 north-south route, which passed through Lancaster, Preston, Wigan and Warrington.
Plans which required considerable demolition of property and, ultimately, proved unacceptable.
It was a pre-war visit to study the then newly constructed autobahns of Germany which impressed a young member of a top level British engineers' delegation in 1938. James Drake (later Sir James), was in 1948 appointed Lancashire county surveyor. The following year he proposed the 'Road plan for Lancashire' – a 94 mile stretch of motorway which got official backing but proved unfeasible due to post-war austerity.
It was 1953 before the Ministry of Transport returned to the grand idea which would spark a transport revolution. Preston by-pass, Britain's first motorway, would run from Bamber Bridge to Broughton.
No public inquiry was necessary as there were few objections. Only three other homes and a farmhouse were affected. All land was acquired by agreement and no Compulsory Purchase Orders were used.
It was believed the creation of the road would substantially reduce the number of accidents by taking heavy vehicles out of the urban areas.
Construction began in June 1956 and was completed in November 1958. In total 3,400,000 tones of earth was excavated.
At the opening of the road on December 5, 1958, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, said: "What Lancashire has today, other parts of the country will have tomorrow."
A granite plinth marking the occasion was erected at Salmesbury interchange.
You can still see it today at the entrance to the motorway police compound.
On September 1962 work began on the 13.5 mile stretch from Broughton to Carnforth. According to the Motorway Archive, an 'Online Encyclopaedia of UK Motorway Heritage': "With no intermediate interchanges along its 13½ mile length through an area which is rural in character it was to be the longest stretch between junctions on a British motorway.
"In order to minimise the extent of farm severance, the route was on the eastern side and adjacent to the West Coast main line railway over a length of several miles.
"This had the effect of requiring an exceptional number of occupation bridges over the motorway, to connect directly with those provided when the railway was constructed in the 19th century.
Historically, all north-south transportation through this part of the country followed a line on the eastern edge of the low-lying coastal plain close to the rising ground of the Pennine foothills.
"In consequence, within a corridor less than half a mile wide south of Garstang, there had been a Roman road, there was Lancaster Canal still in use, there were traces of a turnpike road, the main line railway, the A6 by-pass of the town constructed in the 1930s and, in the 1960s, the motorway."
Work was completed in 1965, by when the M6 stretched 111 miles from Stafford to Carnforth.
Among the distinctive features on this new route were the Forton motorway service station and the Snowhill bridge, near Scorton, which won a Civic Trust design award in 1965.
l For more on the history of the local and national motorway network visit www.ukmotorwayarchive.or