Farmers, some of whom had received grade crossings to ensure that they could cross the parkway to their lands, nevertheless complained that they couldn't take their own families for a ride on the road, since they often owned pickup trucks as their primary vehicles, which were not allowed on the road as commercial vehicles until decades later, as privately licensed or "combination-plated" vehicles. Local governments also saw the parkway as offering little benefit to their transportation needs, since it avoided the settlements in the region and could not handle commercial vehicles. The commission did not help matters by aggressively opposing paralleling road projects, on the grounds that it would spoil the views from the highway.