One out of every six retail, wholesale, and service businesses is connected with motor vehicles.
About 3 million miles, or 90 percent of the total, of the public roads carrying this traffic are rural highways, with the balance being streets inside municipalities. These figures have remained comparatively stable over the last two decades, increasing now at a very slight rate, because most construction of “new” roads actually is the replacement or betterment of existing facilities. A highway improvement program therefore is not designed to achieve “more” highways so much as it. is to achieve “better” or “more adequate” ones.
HIGHWAYS DIVIDED INTO SYSTEMS
One of the principal characteristics of this road network is its classification into designated systems, for purposes of financing and management. Thus we have Federal-aid, State, county, township, and other systems, classified in accordance with the responsibility which those political jurisdictions have in the highway function. A street or road providing access to individual homes or farms obviously is of predominant local interest, whereas one linking together the principal population centers of a State is primarily of State and Federal concern. Traffic tends to concentrate on rather limited mileages of highways, so that some of these highways are required to carry heavier volumes than others.
With agriculture, industry, and our defense planning closely geared to motor transportation, Congress has recognized the national interest in a limited mileage of the principal roads by authorizing the designation of two Federal-aid systems, selected cooperatively by the States, local governments, and the United States Bureau of Public Roads.
In 1916 the basic Federal-Aid Highway Act provided for the sharing of highway construction costs between the States and the Federal Government, under standards mutually approved, and with the initiative retained by each State for choosing projects and carrying them out. The planning and development of the Federal-aid systems referred to above began in 1921. Federal funds share with State funds in costs of engineering, construction, and right-of-way acquisition on the designated systems while other charges, such as maintenance and policing, are entirely borne by the States and local agencies. It is proposed to continue this well established and very effective partnership in the enlarged program recommended herein.
The Federal-aid primary system as of July 1, 1954, consisted of 234,407 miles, connecting all of the principal cities, county seats, ports, manufacturing areas, and other traffic generating areas. In general, these are at the same time the main State trunkline roads.
In 1944, the Congress approved designation of the Federal-aid secondary system, which on July 1, 1954, totaled 482,972 miles commonly referred to as the farm-to-market system but which could equally be referred to as the market-to-farm system. It is composed of important feeder roads linking the farms, factories, distribution outlets, and smaller communities of our Nation with the primary system.
Responsibility for construction of these two Federal-aid systems traditionally has been shared in approximately equal amounts by the Federal Government and the States, in accordance with an apportion-
