way improvement, that the desirable standards for that improvement may be established and commonly accepted. . . .”[1]
Finally, the Committee reiterated the recommendation of “Toll Roads and Free Roads” for the creation of a Federal Land Authority, with powers of excess condemnation to aid in recoupment of increases in land values resulting from construction of the system. It also recommended creation of similar authorities in the States, with the thought that a Federal-aid plan might be developed to finance immediate acquisition of land and to permit amortization of the costs by State and local authorities over a long period of time.[2]
It is perhaps of interest that President Roosevelt in transmitting the report to the Congress added in his own words to the transmittal letter prepared in Public Roads the following paragraph:
As a matter of fact, while the courts of the different States have varied in their interpretations, the principle of excess condemnation is coming into wider use both here and in other countries. I always remember the instance of the farmer who was asked to sell a narrow right-of-way through his farm for a main connecting highway. From an engineering point of view it would have been as feasible to build the new highway across the dirt road that ran in front of his house and barn. Actually the owner received from a jury an amount equal to the whole value of the farm. The road was built. The owner of the land thereby acquired two new frontages. He sold lots on one frontage for the former value of his farm. A year or two later he sold the other frontage for the farm value of his farm. The result was that he still had his house and barn and 90 percent of his original acreage, and in addition he had received in cash three times the value of what the whole place was worth in the first instance.[3]
This recitation of what was in fact the early period in urban highway planning is simply to demonstrate that highway officials at that time were ready to join with those in other disciplines who could help in developing the Nation’s needed transportation system, and that the principles then established are still valid. What has been done since has been built on this solid foundation, and is no less a sound structure for continued extension and growth of national, State, and urban transportation from here on.
Planning in Wartime
While, of course, not even suspected at the time, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1940 authorized the last apportionments for the regular Federal-aid highway program to be made until toward the end of World War II. The next Federal-aid act was entitled the Defense Highway Act of 1941, approved on November 19, 1941, less than 3 weeks before Pearl Harbor. While the country was not yet at war, the possibility of United States’ involvement was recognized in the year preceeding to be sufficient, at least in the highway program, to give life to the adage “In time of peace, prepare for war.” The Defense Highway Act in effect placed the road program on a war footing, too little and too late perhaps, but at least a start.
The effect of war preparations, and later the war itself, was felt in two principal ways, first in the need to reconstitute the States’ highway programs to concentrate on road improvements important, and later essential, to the war effort, and second to carry on the restructured program in the face of material shortages, loss of key personnel to the military services, and reduced road user revenues at State level. The Congress responded to these problems to some degree, at least, by authorizing 75 percent instead of 50 percent participation in projects on the strategic network and acceptance of the full cost of providing access to military establishments and essential industrial plants. In the area of critical material shortages, the Bureau of Public Roads developed working relationships with the succession of agencies responsible for allocating critical materials to try to gain for the States the authorizations to draw from the available supplies enough material to meet the need on the most essential projects.
It was a period of great distress, of course, with States seeing their road systems deteriorating under the burden of heavy wartime loads. Materials were allocated on the basis of priorities established by the War Production Board, and it is safe to say that the proof of need in the highway sphere could not have been established without the data available or collected as needed by the statewide highway planning surveys.
Priorities were granted after a project by project review, centralized in Washington, under which each application was examined in detail, and its essentiality rated not only against other highway and transportation needs, but against needs in other areas—housing, manufacturing, farming, and in fact every activity. Precise information on the number of war connected trips over proposed projects, the volumes of goods and war material to be moved, the residences of employees, and many other facts related to the use of the proposed projects had to be assembled, analyzed and funneled to Washington. There the Bureau of Public Roads could begin the torturous process of gaining an allocation of the required steel, rubber, cement, asphalt or other critical material. Suffice it to say that with the highway planning survey data, enough cases could be supported to prevent a breakdown in highway transportation.
As Fairbank once remarked, if in time of peace, prepare for war, then in all logic in time of war one should prepare for peace. And whether it may have been that the long duration of the war could not have been foreseen, preparations for peace indeed began early in the war. The fact that work went steadily forward on preparation of the Interregional Highways report was itself an indication of the long-range view of planning for postwar needs. This effort absorbed a large share of the planning resources of the Bureau of Public Roads not directly involved in the war effort planning.
Another aspect of postwar preparation came in an amendment to the Defense Highway Act, approved on July 13, 1943, that permitted the States to use any funds still remaining from the apportionment under the 1940 Federal-Aid Highway Act not only for the “engineering and economic investigations” authorized in 1934, but also for the preparation of plans, specifications, and estimates (PS&E). The purpose here was to keep the process of collection of essential data going and also to provide a reservoir of “plans on the shelf” to permit immediate start of highway construction once the emergency ended. This latter provision illustrated that the “depression psychology” of the
