The 1934 Act contained another provision of immense importance to the rural residents, an importance probably not fully appreciated at the time. In the paragraph authorizing appropriations appeared the words:
Provided further, That not less than 25 per centum of the apportionment to any State shall be applied to secondary or feeder roads, including farm to market roads, rural free delivery mail roads, and public-school bus routes . . .
As in the 1916 Act, there was no requirement for the designation of a system, the authorization being simply for roads of particular classifications with no limit as to mileage. The Congress did not until years later specifically authorize or require the designation of a secondary system, for the authorizations regularly continued were for “secondary or feeder roads.” The Defense Highway Act of 1941, however, evidently assuming that the roads had formed a system, authorized the extension of the Federal-aid system and the Secondary Road System to include all roads on the strategic network to permit the application of Federal-aid highway funds for their improvement. It was not until the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 that the Congress “Provided, That these funds shall be expended on a system of such roads selected by the State highway departments in cooperation with the county supervisors, county commissioners, or other appropriate local road officials and the Commissioner of Public Roads.” Nevertheless, with the experience of 1916 to 1921 still fresh in mind, the Bureau of Public Roads administratively determined that the States must designate systems on which the secondary funds might be programed, initially setting the mileage limit at 10 percent of the rural highway mileage. The 1944 Act in effect confirmed this early administrative decision and at the same time acceded to the growing pressure from local officials to have a say in the selection of routes to be improved with secondary funds.
It was under these conditions in 1934 and 1935, with highway planning formalized by legislation, that H. S. Fairbank began planning for planning. Fairbank, who impressed all who knew him as a brilliant man, a man of broad vision, the most fluent writer of Public Roads’ history, was an engineer and a scholar, yet a practical man. He was indeed the “father” of highway planning. He personally sketched out the data collection and analytical processes, leaving only the details to be worked out by his subordinates (whom he preferred to think of as colleagues). And through the early years he wrote and spoke strongly and often in behalf of the planning concept and in encouraging not only its adoption but its use in policy, administrative, and engineering decisions.
Fairbank made it clear that the early work was not planning but the collection and analysis of data to be used in planning, and the agreements between the States and the Bureau were for the purpose of conducting highway planning surveys of three broad types—road inventory, traffic, and financial and road use. As a parenthetical note, it is when one advances from data collection and analysis to forecasting the future that one advances from surveying to planning.
The inventory phase involved driving over every mile of rural highway, recording its width, type, and condition; on the more important routes the geometric features such as curves, grades and sight distances; all farms, residences, businesses, industrial plants, schools, hospitals, and any other cultural feature that the roads must serve. All the information was to be recorded on inch-to-the-mile county maps, and the data tabulated in a variety of ways for analytical use.
The traffic surveys were built on the cooperative traffic surveys described earlier but underwent considerable improvement in method as automatic traffic counting equipment, a better understanding of road design requirements, and improved statistical procedures became available. Basically they involved intensive traffic volume counting on main routes, less intensive counting on secondary roads and spot checks on lightly traveled local roads. At all stations, vehicles were classified as to type, and on the main roads a sampling of commercial vehicles was weighed on portable scales, their cargoes classified, their origins and destinations ascertained, and their tare weights recorded where known. Origins and destinations of passenger cars were also sampled. All these data were to be tabulated in various ways and shown on appropriate maps. They served to show the service highways were providing, the vehicle miles of travel and ton miles of goods and products moved, the lengths and purposes of trips, and average and peak hour volumes for design purposes. When coupled with the road inventory data, they showed the adequacy of the existing roads to provide for the movement of traffic and to serve the needs of rural land use, particularly farms. They permitted estimates of the cost of bringing road conditions up to a standard regarded as suitable for current traffic and, to the extent it could be forecast, future traffic.
Measuring sight distances and curvature on existing highways to get data to be used in planning.
The third general area involved the recording of expenditures and revenues for highways and all other purposes from all units of government, including special districts, to ascertain the degree to which user and other taxes were being applied to road purposes by the individual units and, more generally, by the various levels of government. These studies would show the degree to which the main roads were in fact supported by the users as the theorists then thought appropriate, and the local roads by property or general taxes. Today it is recognized that it is only at the extremes that the theory can fully operate
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