- Joint development of highway rights-of-way has been encouraged so as to accommodate other uses which, by their nature or design, could be rendered compatible with the highway. Such uses might be located over or under the highway or, right-of-way lines permitting, beside the highway. Joint development projects frequently provide for parking facilities, parks, and recreation areas; other uses have included buildings, both public and private, and mass transportation facilities, such as rail rapid transit lines.
- Trails within highway rights-of-way form a special category of joint development. Within the last few years, there has been greatly increased interest in bicycling as a healthy form of recreation, an economical transportation mode, and a significant means of conserving energy. In 1971, the FHWA issued a notice urging States to give favorable consideration to the inclusion of bicycle or hiking trails within highway rights-of-way under appropriate conditions. Two years later this notice was expanded and indicated that Federal highway funds could be used in the cost of trails included in highway projects. During 1973 Congress carried this program one step further by authorizing in the highway legislation the use of Federal funds, otherwise available to States for highway purposes, for the provision of separate bikeways or walkways up to a total of $40 million per year.
- In 1965, the Federal Highway Administrator brought together a group of eight distinguished professionals—representing engineers, architects, landscape architects, and planners—and requested that they prepare a set of guidelines for the planning and design of urban expressways. The product of their work was The Freeway in the City, issued in May 1968. The report contained many unusual and innovative proposals and represented the most advanced thinking of its time on the problem of fitting a freeway into an urban setting.
The location of I-66 in Virginia was altered to save historic Beverly’s Mill near Middleburg.
Protection for Parks, Recreation Areas, Wildlife and Waterfowl Refuges, and Historic Sites
Lands in parks, recreation areas, wildlife and waterfowl refuges, and historic sites have particular environmental significance. Preservation has emerged as a conscious consideration in public works programs and in the public’s mind only in the last two decades. Preservation had always been a latent concern in good engineering practice.
One of the first movements for historic preservation came about in the 19th century when Miss Ann Pamela Cunningham and her Mount Vernon Ladies Association decided to preserve General George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon. This was and still is today a purely private effort.
The current phase of preservation that is discerned today is the environmental approach. Historic preservation was conceived as a facet of the physical environment to be reflected in its total view. Historic districts and restrictive zoning came about. Incorporating sympathetic modern transportation facilities in these areas has presented the highway engineer with many challenges.
As historic preservation has developed, legislative mandates have helped define its direction and goals and often presented interesting parallels with the highway program. In 1906, the Antiquities Act was passed which gave the Secretary of the Department of the Interior responsibility for prehistoric and historic sites on Federal lands. In 1916, the year of the first highway act, the National Park Service Act was passed which included preservation of historic parks. In 1935, the Historic Sites Act announced a national policy to preserve for public use historic resources. This Act was the culmination of the associative value and inherent architectural merit phases of the preservation movement and exists today in the National Historic Landmark Program.
