only a few months away. Throughout the winter the roads, once cleared of snow, could carry heavy trucks because they were frozen solid, but every highway engineer and maintenance superintendent knew what could be expected after the spring thaw began.
The Department of Agriculture immediately endorsed the AASHO plan and asked all States to submit their priority programs as soon as possible.
Government Seizure of the Railroads
To avert complete paralysis, the Government seized all the mainline steam railroads on December 26, 1917, and set up a Federal Railroad Administration to operate them. This was not so much a reflection on the work of the Railroads’ War Board as an admission that only a Government agency could suspend the operation of the antitrust laws and the onerous regulations of the Interstate Commerce Commission, designed to foster competition, and force the various war agencies to resolve their conflicting demands for transportation. “The government can ignore the anti-trust laws, force the various war-supply departments to accept what transportation is given them, eliminate the problems of credit and capital for future construction, and settle beyond dispute the demands of labor.”[1]
The Railroad Administration organized the seized lines into three huge systems—the Eastern Railroads, Southern Railroads, and Western Railroads, pooling equipment and terminals. Since the Government now had direct control over all railroad cars, the Priority Board suspended the operation of Priority Order No. 2, and on February 6, 1918, Director General of Railroads McAdoo assured AASHO that “The United States Railroad Administration will cooperate with the Secretary of Agriculture by transporting materials for construction of national highways designated by it as a military or economic necessity, when the equipment is available and not needed to move supplies for the army, navy, shipping board, or other governmental activities.”[2]
The Quagmires of Spring
In 1917 very few States had load limit laws to protect their highways. Michigan had just passed a law requiring reduced loads during the spring thaw. A 1913 Pennsylvania law permitted gross vehicle loads of 24,000 pounds, not to exceed 750 pounds per inch width of tire, and a few eastern States had similar laws. But these laws were not enforced strictly and apparently not at all against military vehicles. Prophetically, the Engineering News-Record warned of the coming debacle and urged engineering societies and the press to prepare the public for it: “The universal cry for a more complete use of the roads in order to relieve the railroads of their abnormal burdens will probably be utilized as an excuse to evade or even violate intentionally not only statute law [on vehicle loading], but the law of reason.”[3]
This Fairfax County, Va., road, macadam surfaced with bituminous materials, shows the effect of truck traffic in 1918.
With the arrival of spring, the predicted destruction occurred on an unprecedented scale. In Delaware a single truck with a gross load of 11 tons broke up a light macadam road from end to end in one trip. In New York bituminous macadam roads that had given good service for 5 to 10 years broke up and became impassable under truck traffic averaging only 30 heavy vehicles per day. Roads that cost $11,000
- ↑ Government Operation And What It Means, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 80, No. 3, Jan. 3, 1918, p. 5.
- ↑ McAdoo Will Aid In Transporting Road Materials, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 80, No. 8, Feb. 21, 1918, p. 381.
- ↑ What Most Highway Departments Will Face In The Near Future, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 80, No. 15, Apr. 11, 1918, p. 693.
