Committee’s report, A 10-Year National Highway Program, was transmitted to Congress in February 1955. Using the Bureau of Public Roads-States estimate of $23 billion and adding to it $4 billion for the urban auxiliary routes not included in that estimate, the Committee arrived at an overall cost for completion of the Interstate System, in the 10 years 1956–65, of $27 billion. The Federal share was figured at $25 billion, or about 90 percent.
This attractive safety rest area and information center on I-94 near New Buffalo, Mich., is the result of a combined effort of architects, landscapers, and design engineers to preserve mature trees and to provide grassy picnic areas. The pond was purposely created from a 4-acre borrow pit.
To manage the financing of the program, the Committee proposed creation of a Federal corporation which would issue $20 billion of long-term bonds to be repaid over the 32-year period 1956–87 from the existing 2-cent Federal motor-fuel tax. While the proposal had many attractive aspects, features that probably weighed most heavily against it were: (1) it placed a ceiling for 32 years on the regular ABC Federal-aid program (as a necessary part of the financing plan); (2) it would cost $12 billion in bond interest; and (3) it removed fiscal control of the program, in effect, from the hands of Congress.
Program Established
Legislation Fails in 1955
Equipped with these reports, Congress began consideration of the highway problem early in 1955—in both the House and the Senate. The Senate Subcommittee on Roads held hearings extending from February into April. In the House, the Committee on Public Works held hearings from April into July. In addition to the public hearings, both committees spent countless hours in executive session.
Both the Senate and the House had for consideration an Administration bill, modeled rather closely after the recommendations of the President’s Advisory Committee. The Senate also had before it a bill introduced by Senator Albert Gore. This bill proposed continuing the Federal-aid program generally in its traditional form but with substantial increase in authorization levels. Annual authorizations for the regular Federal-aid highway program would be increased from the existing level of $700 million to $1.1 billion; Interstate authorizations from $175 million to $500 million; both authorizations would cover each of the 5 fiscal years 1956–1960; the Federal share of Interstate costs would be increased from the level of 60 percent to a two-thirds share, and apportionment among the States would remain as prescribed in the 1954 Act.
Later, Senator Francis Case introduced a bill providing over a 10-year period annual authorizations of $450 million for the ABC program and $900 million for the Interstate System, the latter to be on a 90–10 matching ratio.
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