modes into consideration, the highway program as authorized by the Congress had gone ahead as an independent program. It was during this period that questions began to be raised as to whether there should be “alternatives” to the highway program. Transit interests began to speak with a stronger voice in the Congress, as evidenced by the establishment in 1964 of the Urban Transportation Administration in the Housing and Home Finance Agency (in 1965 this Agency became a part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)). The larger cities began to see their overall needs for transportation, and even for streets and highways, diverging from the programs envisioned by the States.
As noted earlier, each of the major reports on highway needs—1939, 1944, and 1955—had been initiated by the executive branch, but each had the added strength of being carried on by the paralleling direction of an act of Congress. So too in the 1964 study was the paralleling action initiated by the Public Works Committee of the House, which passed unanimously a bill calling for a report on the highway needs of the Nation to be submitted in January 1967, the target date of the AASHO study of which the Committee was well aware. That bill died in the Senate, which reasoned that the organic legislation required annual reports by the Bureau of Public Roads anyway, so no specific legislation was needed. The following year, 1965, Representative George H. Fallon, then Chairman of the House Public Works Committee, introduced a somewhat similar bill, which finally emerged as a Joint Resolution, S.J. Res. 81, instructing the Secretary of Commerce, acting through the Bureau of Public Roads, to “. . . report to Congress in January, 1968, and in January of every second year thereafter, his estimate of the future highway needs of the Nation.” Thus, it appeared that the way was cleared for the cooperative studies to continue by the traditional coordinated direction of the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government. The highway program, it was assumed, would continue to be an independently authorized, although cooperatively developed, program.
If the Congress accepted that the program planned cooperatively could best be authorized independently, that view was not necessarily accepted by the executive branch. The Bureau of the Budget, through which all reports to Congress involving Federal funds in any amount then must pass, as early as 1961 when the "210" report was being reviewed, reasoned that any emphasis on the nonuser benefits might encourage the application of general funds rather than exclusively road-user funds to support the program and that to do so would be in the direction of unbalancing the Federal budget. This position was taken even though the Congress in authorizing the study had specifically called for an investigation of benefits to other than highway users.
Meanwhile as the plans for the study moved ahead, it became apparent that with the massive data collection and analyses required for the functional classification of all roads and streets in all jurisdictions, completion of a report by 1967 was out of the question. Yet, with the final apportionments for the Interstate program to be made in 1969 to meet the scheduled completion date, there was real urgency to provide facts to the Congress to serve as a basis for the post-Interstate program because extensive hearings and a searching review of highway needs comparable to that of 1955 and 1956 were anticipated. The AASHO Cooperating Committee, renamed by then the Committee on the Continuing Highway Program, concluded that the Congress must be furnished at least gross estimates of foreseeable needs as soon as possible and decided to ask the States to provide estimates not on the basis of functional systems to be designated as a result of the study, but on the basis of the current administrative systems. This estimate would be furnished as an “introductory” or “preliminary” report to give scale to the magnitude of the needed program, with refinements, once the functional classification could be completed. On the basis of this decision, ratified by the AASHO executive committee in Atlanta at the annual meeting in 1964, new manuals were prepared and work moved quickly ahead on the truncated study. This was followed by the much more deliberate and complex work of functional classification and related studies of other aspects of future needs, including such elements as the greater attention to safety and environmental considerations and bases for apportionment of funds not only among the systems, but among the States and local jurisdictions. This decision was made fully workable by the passage of S.J. Res. 81 a few months later. As a result, it became possible to furnish information to the Congress on different aspects of the upcoming problems on a continuing and timely basis at the biennial intervals specified in the resolution rather than in a massive single report comparable to the 1961 Highway Cost Allocation Study (the 210 study).
Highway planning at statewide and national levels seemed to be launched on a course that would lead to regular reporting to the Congress of needs for highway transportation, determined cooperatively by Federal, State and local officials, keeping abreast of changing technology in all transportation modes and of changing social and economic conditions. Most importantly, the study efforts provided the groundwork and guidelines for the broader studies embracing all modes of transportation that would be undertaken in the future.
The Movement Toward Transportation Studies
Before the 1968 report had been completed, another change at the Federal level further complicated the longstanding relationship between the Bureau of Public Roads, the Congress, and the State highway departments—the establishment of the Department of Transportation. Later the relationships were to become still more complex as departments of transportation were created in many States, a factor having an especially trying effect on the Bureau’s longtime partner, the American Association of State Highway Officials, which eventually absorbed or was absorbed by the State DOT officials as the name of the organization was changed to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. The cordial relations between the Bureau, the States, and the Congress of earlier, simpler times was lost, perhaps never to be regained.
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