The pressure thus generated, impelling toward prompt interconnection of all the designated routes, forced a decision between two possible courses of action toward an eventual complete improvement. One of these would have involved the piecemeal completion of improvements regarded as fully adequate on each successive section of the system before undertaking any improvement whatever on other sections. The other course and the one adopted, described as stage construction, attempted to spread some degree of improvement as rapidly as possible over the whole system, and to build on this initial accomplishment by subsequent stages of improvement.
This was one of the expedients adopted to “get the traffic through” as quickly as possible over the entire main highway system. It was a proper expedient, and it resulted, as it was intended to result, in the giving of the greatest possible measure of service to the fast-growing and widespreading highway traffic in the shortest possible time. In accordance with this stage construction policy surfaces of low type were built as initial improvements wherever they could reasonably be expected to satisfy the minimum requirements of the existing traffic. Where high-type surfaces were required by the developed traffic they were commonly given the least width that would afford a substantial service. The funds thus saved were employed to extend surfacing to other sections.
The stage construction policy did not encourage any form of temporary improvement that would not acceptably serve as a basis for the further improvement contemplated. On the contrary, it insisted that the first stage improvements made, such as grading and drainage, and the cheaper types of surfacing, should be capable of incorporation without substantial loss as bases for subsequent pavements of higher type and greater width. Present inadequacies in the highway system that result from application of the stage construction policy consist mainly of surfaces a little narrow and somewhat weak for the traffic that moves over them. But these are defects that can be corrected by addition, with the almost complete salvage of the previous investment.
The more serious defects of the present roads—those that will involve in their correction a considerable loss of invested value, and that already have been responsible for a heavy obsolescence of the roads built—are consequences of another expedient adopted to hasten the extension of improvement in the pioneer period. That expedient was the acceptance of the existing rights-of-way of the preautomobile roads as the limits within which to place the new improvements. The sharp curvature and indirect alinement resulting from this policy are the causes of by far the greater part of the recognized present obsolescence of the main highway system.
In retrospect it appears that another course might have been followed but there was no question of the wisdom of the action at the time. It must be remembered that during the greater part of the period when the defective roads were built the motor vehicle had not yet become the abundant revenue producer it now is. The property tax was still relied upon in considerable measure to pay the costs of the roads built, and that form of tax was little easier to collect then than now. Annual road revenues were, therefore, relatively small in relation to need; and the most pressing need, as already remarked, was the extension of surfacing. There appeared to be very good
