passage of the legislation. But the Ways and Means Committee did not stop there. Under section 210, it authorized and directed the Secretary of Commerce, in cooperation with the State highway departments to make an investigation and report to give the Congress “. . . information on the basis of which it may determine what taxes should be imposed by the United States, and in what amounts, in order to assure, insofar as practicable, an equitable distribution of the tax burden among the various classes of persons using the Federal-aid highways or otherwise deriving benefits from such highways." Moreover, it specifically directed that the study should be coordinated with the AASHO Road Test, and with other research activities of the Bureau, and it authorized funds ”as may be necessary” to carry out the investigation.
The final report was due in 1959 but was delayed until 1961, and even then, the conclusions were based on preliminary performance equations derived by the Road Test staff from the still unfinished AASHO Road Test specifically for the section 210 study. A supplementary report was made to Congress in 1965 once the final equations were available, although the differences between the final and preliminary equations were so slight as to make unnecessary any revision of the “210” study conclusions. In all, the series of reports, including four progress reports, occupied 940 pages in printed form.[1]
The “210” report surely equaled in stature the reports on transportation of earlier years, the Eastman Report and the Report of the Board of Investigation and Research, but in its narrower scope and with much more data available, it far exceeded them in accuracy and precision of the information on which to base highway policy.
By the time the 1959 Federal-Aid Highway Act was passed, the more precise engineering estimates of the cost of completing the Interstate System had shown an increase in cost from the $27 billion of the 1956 Act, based on the 1954 planning estimate, to $41 billion. Accompanying the Federal-Aid Highway Act was an amendment to Title II, the Highway Revenue Act, to provide the added funds then seen as needed. Lacking the expected results of the “210” study, the motor-fuel taxes were increased one cent per gallon above the levels set in 1956 as a temporary measure. By 1961 the Congress had received the “210” report entitled Highway Cost Allocation Study, with its estimates of the cost responsibility of the various classes of vehicles based on the preliminary equations from the AASHO Road Test, The Ways and Means Committee, accepting the cost responsibility as calculated by the ”incremental method” and still striving to finance the completion of the System by 1972, recommended continuing the temporary increase in the tax on fuel, made other adjustments of minor nature and, more significantly, increased the tax on trucks from $1.50 to $3.00 per year for each 1,000 pounds over 26,000 pounds in gross weight. (This in effect applied to all trucks with more than 2 axles and all tractor truck semitrailers and full trailers.) With the continued higher fuel tax, applicable to all vehicles, the result was that passenger cars were taxed at just about the rate to cover their cost responsibility and in line with the benefits they were receiving from the program. The tax on the heaviest trucks, on the other hand, despite the large increase in their weight tax, did not come up to the level of the cost they occasioned, but exceeded somewhat the calculable benefits they were receiving. The decision on the truck taxes seemingly was consistent with the wording of section 210 in the 1956 Act which called under paragraph (b) (2) for a determination of the "proportionate share" of the highway costs and paragraph (b) (3) for the benefit of the “use” of the highways by the vehicles of the various classes. The curve of taxes in relation to gross weights resulting from the Committee action lay just about midway between the curves of costs and benefits, and perhaps surprisingly, evoked no great objection from the trucking industry. (One reason that the industry was not unwilling to accept the higher taxes was the strongly implied commitment by the Congress that once sufficient mileage of the Interstate System was open to traffic, the size and weight limits imposed for the first time in Federal legislation in the 1956 Act would be relaxed to the degree the higher design standards would permit. Subsequent legislation to effectuate this understanding failed of passage, however, until the Federal-Aid Highway Amendments of 1974 when modest increases in axle weights and gross vehicle weights were allowed.) It might be noted also that section 210 of the 1956 Act called for a determination of direct or indirect benefits other than from the use of the highways. While the “210” report clearly showed such benefits, the Congress decided to assess the entire cost of the program on the users. The user rates set in 1961 still apply, soundly derived from the results of the AASHO Road Test. While the AASHO Road Test was undertaken to aid in highway pavement design, the first use of its results was in connection with highway economics and finance, and that use alone may well have justified its cost.
The Functional Classification Study
But it became obvious that planning for highways, at least after completion of the Interstate System if not earlier, must be undertaken, planning not only for programs to meet the upcoming needs, but to finance them. One of the striking facts to come out of the 1954 estimate of cost of completing the several highway systems, updated by the section 210 study, was the inadequacy of the Secondary System in relation to the rural Primary System and urban portions of the Primary and Secondary Systems. Also revealed was the disparity among the States as to the mileage of the Federal-Aid Secondary System, varying from as little as 6 percent of the rural highway mileage in one State to 39 percent in another. Obviously the concept of what should constitute a Federal-aid secondary route needed definition. While the national total had little significance except to illustrate the problem, it is of interest that the estimate of highway needs prepared in connection with the 210 study showed the needs from 1956 to 1971 on the Federal-aid primary routes, other than Interstate, in relation to the needs on the Federal-aid secondary roads under State control (about what the 1944 Act called principal secondary and feeder roads) to be in the ratio of 43.5:17.6, compared to the authorization ratio of 45:30 then still in effect. Obviously two aspects needed investigations.
- ↑ H. Doc. 106, 85th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. Doc. 344, 85th Cong., 2d Sess.; H. Doc. 91, 86th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. Doc. 355, 86th Cong., 2d Sess.; H. Doc. 54, 87th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. Doc. 72, 87th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. Doc. 124, 89th Cong., 2d Sess.
