the various emergency programs to deal with the condition of unemployment.
As previously suggested, the States, in their highway operations, have never had at their disposal funds in sufficient amount to meet the costs of a desirably prompt construction program and a simultaneous heavy expense of land acquisition. The same condition has generally affected the various operations of the municipal and county governments. In consequence, the character of the improvements undertaken too often has been governed by the limited possibilities of land acquisition.
When, as in the recent emergency programs, there is added to the normal difficulties of this problem an urgent demand for speed of action, a situation already bad is made much worse. It is believed to be beyond question that a proper handling of the acquisition of land for public purposes requires reasonably long anticipation and careful and coordinated planning of all the public purposes that may be affected by every proposed purchase. When, as is now well-nigh universally the case, the obtainment of land is postponed until the very moment its possession becomes imperative for the provision of an announced and urgently required facility, every condition conduces to precipitate ill-advised, uneconomical, and generally unsatisfactory action.
This condition comes about, in large measure, from the legislative practice, so general in the States, of appropriating or providing for land acquisition in the same acts that supply funds for the construction of public works. This practice inevitably postpones to the last and the most inconvenient and inappropriate moment a provision that should be the subject of far-sighted planning and accomplishment well in advance of the actual need. This observation is especcially true with respect to highways, because of the principle of growth that lies in them, but which far too often is not recognized in the action of the authorities of all branches of government, the judicial as well as the executive and legislative.
A typical example may serve to illustrate the way in which this growth principle is disregarded in the improvement of highways, and the expensive and embarrassing consequences that ensue. A road hitherto lightly traveled is about to be improved. It occupies an ancient right-of-way of a width consistent with its use many years ago. The legislature, as the appropriating body, has made available for the improvement of that particular road and many others certain public funds from which must be met not only the costs of constructing the roads but also whatever costs there may be for the acquisition of the lands on which such roads may be built. Because they see not only the necessity for improvement on the particular road but also the many competing needs of other roads, and have at their disposal and in view only a certain total sum that they feel must be made to go a far as possible in meeting all needs, the highway authorities construct the road on the existing admittedly restricted right-of-way. The principle of growth asserts itself. New traffic, drawn and generated by the improvement, appears on the road. The road as built soon becomes inadequate to accommodate the greater traffic. The surface must be widened, but to do so an additional width of right-of-way is required and sought of the owners of abutting land. If this additional width had been obtained in advance of the original improvement it
