In the 1944 report recommending the designation of the Interstate System, no attempt was made to estimate its cost, simply because of insufficient information or experience at that time. In 1948 the cost of improving the Interstate System was estimated at about $11 billion, roughly half rural and half urban. Under that proposal, the system in 1968 would have been brought to adequacy for 1948 traffic. In 1950 an estimate was made of the cost of bringing the local rural roads to a state of adequacy. But now for the first time the Congress called for an estimate of the cost of “completing” all systems of roads and streets. And for the first time the estimate could be made with a reasonably realistic projection of the rate of traffic growth based on the experience of the first postwar decade (although even this projection proved to be low). To interpret Congress meaning of “completing” and believing that considerable urgency was now being expressed, it was decided that the plan would call for completing the Interstate System by 1964 and all others by 1974, 10 to 20 years respectively. It was further decided to plan the Interstate System to be adequate in 1964 for 1974 traffic and the others adequate for the current traffic at the time of completion. As in present highway needs studies, the concept of “tolerable” and “desirable” standards was used for the systems other than Interstate, that is accepting sections that would still be adequate at the proposed date of completion of the system, but constructing any that would be inadequate to standards for adequacy for 20 years beyond the assumed date of construction. Construction programs to accomplish these ends were grouped into 5-year periods.
With the conditions spelled out, the States were once again called on for a massive data collection, compilation, and analysis task, seeking the aid of the cities and counties to assist in the areas of their interest. It could be expected that States that had built a considerable mileage of high-standard, controlled-access, divided highways could make realistic estimates of cost, but many such standards were difficult to visualize, and some States having no legal right to control access saw no reason to estimate on that basis. Even so, however, the cost to complete the Interstate System was estimated at $23.2 billion, and for the first 10 years’ program for all other systems $78.6 billion, for a total cost for the 10-year period a “staggering” sum of $101.8 billion. In the next 20 years new construction and some reconstruction on all systems would add $114.4 billion more, for a total construction cost over the 30-year period of $216.2 billion.
As noted earlier, $216 billion can hardly be regarded as a “need.” It is simply the result of the addition of the best estimates that could be made of the cost of achieving the level of service accepted as the basis of the estimate of “completing” the system to that standard.
With no realistic chance of meeting all the “needs” on all the systems, however, the $101 billion figure for the 10-year program (roughly 14 for the Inter- state System which represented only 1 percent of the total highway mileage) focused attention of the cost and urgency of getting on with this most important of all the systems. The report was to have its effect.
The 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act
Although the steps leading to the launching of the Interstate program are described in Chapter 9, consideration of some aspects of the manner in which the planning efforts were used in reaching the final decision seems in order, even at the risk of some repetition. While the most immediate use of results of the 1954 study was in connection with legislation relating to the Interstate System, that report was by no means the single, or even the most important, factor in the ultimate congressional action. It did, however, provide the basic information on which two other major attacks on the highway problem were based.
The first factor was the appointment of a committee of the Governors Conference to study the highway program, no doubt to some degree at least inspired by representations from their highway administrators. This committee had easy access, of course, to the results of the needs studies the States were making in response to requirements of the 1954 Federal-Aid Highway Act.
Paralleling this move, action again became evident in the White House, with the appointment by President Eisenhower of the Advisory Committee on a National Highway Program, not only recognizing the deficiencies of the highway system, but emphasizing again the national responsibility for highway transportation. This committee, appointed in September 1954, quickly became known as the Clay Committee, for President Eisenhower named General Lucius D. Clay as its chairman. General Clay had become acutely aware of transportation problems by virtue of having had responsibility for creating and operating the successful Berlin Airlift but a few years earlier.
Thus, once again, a presidentially appointed committee was charged with consideration of the Nation’s highway needs. In contrast to the National Interregional Highway Committee created 13 years earlier, which was a planning committee, the Clay Committee was an action committee. The Interregional Highway Committee spent 3 years in a massive data assembly and analysis program culminating in a plan, but only in the most general recommendations for its implementation through a program. The Clay Committee, in a period of little more than 3 months, in effect recommended an action program to implement the earlier committee’s plan. But both depended almost entirely on planning data assembled, as a result of acts of Congress, by the cooperating efforts of the Bureau of Public Roads and the State highway departments.
The composition of the Clay Committee evidenced this contrast. The Interregional Highway Committee, as described earlier, was heavily “planning” oriented. The Clay Committee, in addition to its chairman, included Stephen I. Bechtel, head of a large and successful contracting organization; David Beck, president of the Teamsters Union; S. Sloan Colt, a member of a New York investment banking firm; and William A. Roberts, president of a company manufacturing large construction machinery. With these sharp differences in background and outlook influenced by the difference in the Committee’s charge, there was one important similarity. In each case the secretary was provided by the Bureau of
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