highway mileage of the United States, yet the experts estimated that it would carry 20 percent of all vehicle miles of travel. It would directly connect all cities of 300,000 population and reach 59 of the 62 cities of 100,000 to 300,000 population.
The Committee found, as had the BPR in its 1939 report Toll Roads and Free Roads, that very little of the estimated traffic on the optimum system would be long-distance interregional traffic. Most of the traffic, and all of the high-density traffic, would occur within “zones of influence” around the cities, varying in radius from 35 miles for the largest cities to 6 miles for the small ones. Of the recommended system, 8,141 miles would fall within these zones of influence, and this mileage would include practically all of the highways and city streets expected to carry more than 10,000 vehicles per day. Of the remaining 25,779 miles, 20,300 would probably carry less than 3,000 vehicles per day, and thus require only 2-lane pavements.[1]
Because most of the traffic was shown by the State and PRA traffic studies to have origins or destinations within the cities, particularly their central business districts, the Committee concluded that there was little need for bypasses.[N 1] The interregional routes, therefore, would have to penetrate into the cities, where they would exert a tremendous influence in shaping city growth. They should, therefore, be planned in close cooperation with the city governments and planning authorities:
The immediate inference . . . is that the creation of such ample and efficacious traffic facilities as the improvement of the interregional routes would supply, will exert a powerful force tending to shape the future development of the city.
It is highly important that this force be so applied as to promote a desirable urban development. If designed to do this, the new facilities will speed such a development and grow in usefulness with the passage of time.[3]
The Committee recommended standards for the interregional highways but declined to estimate the probable total cost of the system. “Moreover,” they went on to say, “the usefulness and validity of an estimate of the total cost of a construction program that must inevitably extend over a period of perhaps 20 years and be affected by unpredictable changes in the general economy, in the habits and desires of the people, in the character of vehicles, and in other circumstances, would still be highly questionable.”[4]
However, the Committee did recommend that construction of the system be prosecuted at a rate of about $500 million per year in the rural sections and $250 million per year in the urban sections—a rate that would provide about 145,100 man-years of direct employment, and 323,400 man-years of indirect employment per year.
One of President Roosevelt’s strongly held convictions was that some of the increase in land values created by new highways should be recouped by the Government and used to pay for the highways. The Interregional Highway Committee avoided this ticklish matter in their report, but the President brought it up in his message transmitting the report to Congress, as he had in his message on the 1939 toll road report. “After all,” he wrote, “why should the hazard of engineering give one private citizen an enormous profit? If there is to be an unearned profit, why should it not accrue to the Government—State, Federal or both?”[5]
The New Highway Charter
There were already a number of postwar highway proposals before the 78th Congress when it received the interregional highway report. One of these bills would set up a Rural Local Roads Administration independent of the PRA through which the counties could receive Federal aid without going through the States. The bill would give this agency $1,125 billion to begin operations.[6] Senate Bill No. 971, backed by AASHO, would provide $1 billion annually for 3 years divided equally between the Federal-aid system, urban extensions, and secondary feeder roads and would increase the Federal share of the cost to 75 percent. This bill would also create an interregional highway system.[7]
The perennial toll road bill, with added features, would establish an independent commission with authority to issue $10 billion in U.S. bonds to pay for a toll system of 8-lane military superhighways and for airports, with dams and powerplants to furnish light for the entire system.[8]
Another proposal would authorize an 18,000-mile system of free superhighways—three east-west from coast to coast and six north-south from border to border—with a system of airports, each 2 miles square, at the 18 intersections. Still another would authorize a defense highway across the United States to connect the Alcan Highway with the Inter-American Highway.
Fantastic as some of them were, these bills showed that there was still an insistent demand from an important segment of the public for long-distance through highways. This demand was coupled with a rising insistence that more attention be given to the strictly rural roads and an awakening interest in civil aviation.
The postwar highway bill that was finally enacted in 1944 after 9 months of congressional wrangling fell below the expectations of the Administration and the States, but was still the largest in history. It authorized Federal aid at the rate of $500 million per year for the three first postwar years, divided $225 million to the Federal-aid highway system, $125 million for urban extensions and $150 million for the principal secondary and feeder roads. These last were required to be spent on a secondary highway system selected by the State highway departments in cooperation with the local road officials and the PRA, but without any mileage or percentage limits. Congress authorized participation with Federal funds up to one-third of the cost of right-of-way, but specifically rejected the President’s suggestion for taking excess right-of-way for purpose of recoupment. Finally, the Act authorized a 40,000-mile National System of Interstate Highways but provided no funds specifically for its construction.
152
- ↑ H. Doc, supra, note 30, pp. 43–45.
- ↑ Id., p. 60.
- ↑ Id., p. 55.
- ↑ Id., p. 114.
- ↑ Id., p. V.
- ↑ New Local Highway Agency Proposed in Congress, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 131, No. 21, Nov. 18, 1943, p. 727.
- ↑ Three Billion Dollars Asked For Postwar Highway Projects, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 131, No. 5, Jul. 29, 1943, p. 179.
- ↑ Several Laws of Engineering Interest Enacted by 2d Session, 78th Congress, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 133, No. 1, Jul. 6, 1944, p. 3.
