A 10-YEAR NATIONAL HIGHWAY PROGRAM
I. Introduction
This report contains recommendations for translating into reality the concept of the President of the United States for a vastly expanded and strengthened national highway system.
The concept was first presented in behalf of President Eisenhower at the governors’ conference on July 12, 1954, by Vice President Nixon. In that speech, using the President's own notes, he conveyed to the governors the conviction that the Nation's highway network is obsolete and inadequate.
It is obsolete—
the President's note said—
because in large part it just happened. It was governed in the beginning by terrain, existing Indian trails, cattle trails, arbitrary section lines. It was designed largely for local movement at low speeds of 1 or 2 horsepower. It has been adjusted, it is true, at intervals to meet metropolitan traffic gluts, transcontinental movement, and increased horsepower. But it has never been completely overhauled or planned to satisfy the needs 10 years ahead.
We can no longer afford to deal with the problem in that manner, the President pointed out.
We live in a dramatic age of technical revolution through atomic power, and we should recognize the fact that the pace is far faster than the simpler revolutions of the past. It was a very long generation from the Watt steam engine to a practical locomotive. It was less than 9 years from the atomic bomb to th launching of an atomic-powered submarine. We have seen a revolutionary increase in opportunity, comfort, leisure, and productivity of the individual.
Look at the prospects in population. In 1870, the population of the United States was 38 million, and our population growth in the previous half century was one of the wonders of the world. In 1970, the population of the United States, it is estimated, will reach 200 million. It will grow in the next 16 years as much as the entire population of the United States was in 1870.
In planning for that future, the President's message pointed out, top priority must be given to transportation, and to health and efficiency in essential industries. “America is in an era,” he said, “when defensive and productive strength require the absolute best that we can have.”
The President specifically called for “a grand plan for a properly articulated [highway] system that solves the problems of speedy, safe transcontinental travel-intercity transportation—access highways—and farm-to-farm movement-metropolitan area congestion—bottle-necks and parking.”
As a target, the President suggested an expenditure of $5 billion annually from all sources for the next 10 years, in addition to current, normal construction expenditures. “It will,” he said, “pay off in economic growth * * * and we shall only have made a good start in the highways the country will need for a population of 200 million people.”
