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America's Highways 1776–1976: A History of the Federal-Aid Program/Part 1/Chapter 11

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Chapter Eleven
Roads
for
National
Defense

The Pershing Map

Shortly before the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1921, Chief MacDonald asked the War Plans Division of the Army General Staff to designate the most important roads for national defense, and he supplied maps on which to show these roads. In 1922 the Army produced the “Pershing Map,” showing for the first time the main roads of prime importance in time of war. For the most part, these coincided with the principal roads selected by the States for their 7 percent systems, and, in fact, the War Department’s general position was that a system of highways that was adequate to serve the industrial and commercial demands of the Nation would adequately serve the military requirements also.[N 1] All of the routes on the Pershing Map were incorporated into the Federal-aid system.

In 1935 the BPR and the War Department restudied the military highway needs to establish priorities for improvement. These priorities were then passed on to the States for use in planning their own highway programs. These needs were a principal factor in selecting the 26,700-mile system of interregional highways recommended by the BPR in its 1939 report, Toll Roads and Free Roads.

In the postwar years, the United States had allowed its military forces to sink into the same unprepared condition that had prevailed before World War I. The rude awakening came in 1939 when the Germans seized Czechoslovakia and prepared to invade Poland. In August 1939, Congress hastily appropriated $2 billion for defense, and the country began rearming.

The War Department again reviewed its strategic highway map, adding more routes which brought the total up to some 74,600 miles, of which 29,000 miles were considered of immediate importance to the defense effort. The Public Roads Administration (PRA) (successor to the BPR in a governmental reorganization plan) and the State highway departments immediately began an inventory of the strategic network roads which disclosed that thousands of miles of the network failed to meet adequate standards for either military or civilian traffic. Worst of all, the survey revealed that there were 2,400 bridges that were unable to safely sustain the H-15 loading of the American Association of State Highway Officials, which was then the standard for bridges on the Federal-aid system.[N 2]

  1. ↑ In 1921 General Pershing had testified before Congress that what the United States needed for defense was not wide transcontinental superhighways, but a network of good roads blanketing the country.
  2. ↑ Since 1935 the Army had designed military equipment to stay within the limits of AASHO bridge loadings. Bridges designed for H-15 loading would readily carry all classes of military equipment except 50-ton tanks. These could safely pass under special speed and spacing restrictions.
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Thee 1922 Pershing Map.
Thee 1922 Pershing Map.

The 1922 “Pershing Map.”

The PRA estimated that it would cost $202 million to remedy these deficiencies, yet Congress had made no appropriations specifically for public roads outside of Federal reservations as a part of the defense build-up. However, the need for such roads increased rapidly as the Army and Navy began enlarging existing posts and laying out new camps and airfields, many of them in areas served only by county and local roads. The Government placed some defense establishments, such as powder works, in remote areas almost devoid of roads. And mobilization placed abnormal strains on the State highway systems to move men and materials to new or enlarged factories.

The stalemate in the European war ended in April 1940 with the German invasion of Denmark, and by the end of June, the Germans were in firm control of Western Europe. Frantically, the United States began mobilizing for war. Between June and September 1940, Congress appropriated $11.55 billion for military housing, armaments, munitions, shipyards and a two-ocean navy. On September 16, 1940, Congress enacted the first peacetime draft.

With WW II approaching, access roads had to be built for new military posts being established. This fleet of trucks carrying tent platforms was going to Camp Shelby, Miss., where a tent city was built to quarter 50,000 recruits.

The Administration asked the States and counties to step up work on the strategic network and on access roads to defense installations, but with little success. Many of the defense access roads were not on the Federal-aid or State highway systems and were thus ineligible for improvement with Federal or State funds. The counties were impoverished and unable to take on the added burden of providing for vastly increased volumes of defense traffic. The Federal-aid secondary and feeder road funds for fiscal years 1940 ​and 1941, drastically cut by Congress, were hopelessly inadequate for the job.

The only agency with sizable Federal funds that could be used quickly to build access roads was the Work Projects Administration, which was still getting about $65 million per month for unemployment work relief. Wherever possible the WPA’s efforts were channeled into defense projects. The requirement that sponsors contribute 25 percent of the project cost was waived and the nonlabor cost limit on projects was raised from $20,000 to $100,000 to permit the purchase of more materials and the use of machinery.[1] For about 5 critical months in the summer and fall of 1940 the WPA kept traffic moving and averted paralysis at dozens of defense installations. These roads were mostly upgraded local roads and not really planned to meet installation needs, but they filled the gap until Congress provided funds for more adequate roads.

Meanwhile Commissioner MacDonald tried to persuade the States to concentrate their funds on the most urgent needs of the strategic highway system. He had no direct legislative authority to do this but relied on his powers of persuasion and the authority conferred in the original Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 to approve or disapprove projects. In August 1940 MacDonald rejected the Oklahoma highway department’s entire $5 million Federal-aid program because it was scattered throughout the State with little regard for strategic needs.[2] A month later Congress, in the Federal Highway Act of 1940, gave the Commissioner of Public Roads specific authority to give priority to defense highways in approving Federal-aid projects. In an even more drastic departure from traditional Federal-aid policies, Congress also authorized the Federal Works Administrator to initiate defense projects urgently requested by the Secretary of War or Secretary of the Navy and to charge the cost of these projects to the Federal-aid apportionments of the States in which they were situated.

This Act was not popular with the States, who viewed it as an attempt to make them pay for road costs that were primarily the responsibility of the national government. It provided no money for urgently needed access roads to defense establishments and, in the face of increasing civilian highway needs, actually reduced the Federal aid authorized for fiscal years 1942 and 1943. Nevertheless, most of them voluntarily concentrated a large part of their funds and other resources on the strategic network and such access roads as were on the Federal-aid system, and they also provided engineering assistance to counties for access roads not on the Federal-aid system. By October 1941, the combined Federal-aid programs of the States totaled 11,271 miles, of which 2,884 miles were on the strategic network and 197 miles were access roads. Over 40 percent of the total funds programed were directed particularly to meeting defense needs.[3]

The PRA Report on Defense Highway Needs

On June 21, 1940, President Roosevelt requested John M. Carmody, the Federal Works Administrator,

to have the Public Roads Administration . . . make a survey of our highway facilities from the viewpoint of national defense and advise me as to any steps that appear necessary.

I suggest that particular attention be paid to the strength of bridges, the width of strategic roads, adequacy of ingress and egress from urban centers, and the servicing of existing and proposed Army, Navy and Air bases.”[4]

The PRA’s report of February 1, 1941, Highways For the National Defense, disclosed an urgent need for the improvement or construction of 1,500 miles of roads entirely within military reservations and 2,830 miles of access roads to serve 192 military establishments. The estimated cost of the access roads was $220 million. The report noted that there were 2,436 substandard bridges in the strategic network and 14,000 miles of surfaces incapable of supporting 9,000-pound wheel loads in all weather. To eliminate these deficiencies would cost $458 million. The PRA recommended immediate appropriation of $150 million for access roads and at least $100 million to remedy critical deficiencies in the strategic network, the latter to be apportioned according to the traditional Federal-aid formula.

There was no immediate action on the PRA report, and it was not until June 2, 1941, that the President asked Congress to provide funds for defense highways. After extensive hearings in both Houses, Congress passed a defense highway bill which provided $150 million for access roads and $125 million to correct critical deficiencies in the strategic network to be apportioned among the States according to the Federal-aid formula.

The President vetoed this bill because of the mandatory apportionment of the strategic highway funds among the States, which, he said prevented the Administration from placing the funds where they were most needed. The veto did not escape criticism. The Engineering News-Record observed that the President had in the past made repeated attacks on the apportionment of Federal-aid funds among the States. The veto, it declared, “is a step toward complete Federal control over Federal contributions to state highway work, which appears to be the President’s objective.”[5]

Congress bent a little but did not entirely accede to the President’s wishes. Three months after the veto, it passed a practically identical bill, with the strategic highway funds scaled down to $50 million of which half were to be apportioned according to the Federal-aid formula and half could be allocated anywhere on the network at the discretion of the Federal Works Administrator. The matching ratio on these funds was to be 75 Federal to 25 State. The $150 million of access road funds in the bill did not have to be matched, but initiation of projects was left to the Government rather than the States.[N 1] The President signed this bill November 19, 1941.

  1. ↑ Congress authorized the appropriation of an additional $100 million for defense access roads in 1942 and a further $25 million in 1944.

War Traffic Pounds the Highways

The Defense Highway Act cleared the way for a tremendous highway effort. In October 1941, the PRA began construction of a vast network of express highways in Arlington County, Virginia, to funnel 50,000 workers into the huge Pentagon Building under ​construction by the War Department. In 1942 alone, the PRA approved 600 access road projects costing over $200 million. Some of these projects were very large indeed. In Michigan the highway department began work on a $12 million limited access expressway connecting Detroit to the River Rouge defense industry complex and the Ford Willow Run bomber plant.

This bridge on U.S. Route 30 in Pennsylvania could carry only infrequent loads such as the 152,000-pound tank transporter and tank.

After the official entry of the United States into the war in December 1941, packs of German submarines began preying on the coastal sealanes, and by May 1942, they were sinking oil tankers at such a rate as to cause acute fuel shortages in the east. The Office of Defense Transportation diverted railroad tank cars normally used to serve inland States to East Coast destinations, hoping that the trucking industry would fill the transportation gap. However, this plan ran into a stubborn obstacle—the size and weight laws of the States.

For years organizations such as the National Highway Users Conference, the trucking associations, and the automobile manufacturers had been trying to get the States to enact uniform size and weight laws so that trucks could pass readily across State lines. Before World War I there had been bills in Congress proposing national registration of vehicles and Federal size and weight laws, but in the end the Government left this field of regulation to the States. The result was diversity, not to say chaos. In 1941 five States still limited wheel loads according to the width of tire—a holdover from the days of solid rubber tires, which had long since disappeared from the highways. Texas and Louisiana imposed the absurd limit of 7,000 pounds on “payloads.” In Kentucky the gross load limit of a four-wheel vehicle on pneumatic tires was 18,000 pounds and in six other States, it was 20,000 pounds. At the same time, other States permitted gross loads as high as 36,000 pounds on four wheels. In the neighboring States of North and South Dakota the difference in permissible gross loading was 12,000 pounds. The permissible gross load on one axle—a more significant measure of stresses imposed on roads—varied from 12,000 pounds in Alabama and Mississippi to 22,400 pounds in Rhode Island and New York, and even 24,640 pounds in the District of Columbia.[6]

In January 1942 a bill was introduced in Congress giving the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set uniform truck weights and sizes as a war measure.[7] Thereafter, a number of States raised their load limits. The PEA and AASHO drew up a provisional Uniform Code of Weights, Heights and Lengths of Motor Vehicles which permitted axle loads of 18,000 pounds and gross loads on four wheels of 30,000 pounds, and up to 40,000 pounds on trucks of three or more axles. This code was put into effect in all States in May 1942, in some by the legislature and in others by proclamation of the Governor, under the auspices of the Council of State Governments.

Despite the liberal limits, widespread violations of the code began almost immediately. When some States began enforcing the new limit, the truckers appealed to the legislature or the governors or even congressmen to suspend the penalties for overloading. Appeals to the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) to stop overloading at the source fell on deaf ears. The controversy came to a head in Colorado when Charles D. Vail, who was State Highway Engineer and also head of the State Patrol began cracking down on the overloaders, most of whom were petroleum haulers. He had two reasons for this. One was to enforce the law and prevent wholesale damage to the State’s highways. The other was fear that if the ​law were not enforced the overloads would become the plateau for a new round of weight-increase demands by the truckers after the war that would lead to the eventual rebuilding of the entire State highway system.[8]

Because of the necessity to transport war materials, commercial and military trucks were allowed to carry overloaded cargo at the expense of the Nation’s roads.

With materials rationed, only minor maintenance, such as patching the cracks in the surface, was performed.

In March 1943, ODT complained to the Governor that Colorado’s rigid enforcement was causing bottlenecks in motor freight movements throughout the Rocky Mountain area and was making it impossible for operators to use their most efficient equipment.[N 1] ODT suggested that Colorado issue free overload permits to allow the truckers to run regularly with overloads for the duration of the emergency. Vail countered with a plan to issue permits for a nominal fee for small overloads, but with fees increasing steeply for serious overloads. This, Vail said, would permit nominal overloads up to a certain point but would make it unprofitable to operate with dangerously destructive overloads.

The Defense Transportation Coordinator then appealed directly to Governor Vivian to “liberalize” Colorado’s enforcement of the Uniform Code, and in September 1943, the Governor by proclamation and executive order set aside the State’s regulatory laws as they might apply to the transportation of materials necessary for the war effort and specifically authorized the continued operation of overlength and overweight equipment without payment of any fees.

  1. ↑ By this time, the truck manufacturing industry, which was going full force to keep up with wartime demands, was producing trucks in quantity which, when fully loaded, considerably exceeded the 18,000-pound axle load of the emergency code.
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This victory for the truckers was widely publicized, and it seriously crippled enforcement of the code in other States. In the words of the PRA, “On high military authority, roads were pronounced expendable.”[9]

Although the highway administrators, including Commissioner MacDonald, were deeply worried about overloading, the rest of the country was more concerned about critical shortages of fuel, rubber, manpower and vehicles, and overloading was widely tolerated as a way to conserve all four. One highway administrator commented, “Unwise publicity has conditioned public opinion to the point where even arrests made of the most flagrant violators of trucking codes are considered obstructive of interstate war transportation plans.”[10]

The End of the Highway Boom

The great highway boom that began in 1921 and continued unabated through the Great Depression, came to an end in the complexities and frustrations of mobilization and war. Fiscal year 1941 was the peak year for the Federal-aid program with 12,936 miles of roads of all classes completed; thereafter completed mileage fell to 10,178 miles in fiscal year 1942, and 8,445 miles in 1943.[11] After 1942 practically all new work related directly to national defense. The diminishing Federal-aid funds were used to solve traffic problems in areas congested by war activities.[N 1] The forest highway funds went into mineral access and timber access roads to provide raw materials for the war effort.

The highway departments were feeling the pinch of scarcities even before Pearl Harbor. In June 1941, the Office of Defense Mobilization imposed materials priorities for all kinds of construction, ranging from A-1 for access roads to military installations and defense plants to A-10 on materials needed for maintenance repairs to Federal-aid highways. Materials for bridges, tunnels and shoulders for roads on the strategic network rated an A-2 priority if on primary highways or A-7 if on secondaries. By April 1942, it required a priority of A-3 or better to get steel of any kind, and at least A-1 to get track-laying tractors or other construction machinery. Only 15 percent of the total U.S. production of construction equipment was going to the domestic market—the rest went to equip Army and Navy engineer troops or as lend-lease to European allies.[12]

In April 1942, the Petroleum Coordinator for War limited the use of asphalt and tar in the 17 Atlantic Seaboard States to projects certified by the PRA as necessary to the successful prosecution of the war. This order was extended to the Rocky Mountains in July. The PRA channeled most of the available asphalt and tar into maintenance “since it is important that the condition of war transport arteries not be allowed to deteriorate.”[13]

To get around the steel shortage, the States changed their designs. Ohio began using wooden bridges on secondary highways. Arch culverts requiring no steel were substituted for reinforced concrete box culverts; steel reinforcing was omitted from concrete pavements.

Acute manpower shortages began to appear in certain categories of employees. In Michigan 40 percent of the draftsmen left the State highway department for the Army or other employment, along with 25 percent of the designers and 27 percent of the inspectors. The Pennsylvania highway department’s engineering staff dropped from 2,728 persons to 2,069 in 8 months.[14] Utah experienced such a serious loss of mechanics that it became difficult to keep its equipment running.

Contractors became scarce as bid prices advanced. In Kansas some contractors asked to be released from their road contracts in order to bid on defense work.

In the face of these difficulties, the States curtailed operations drastically. In April 1942, the War Production Board issued an order stopping all construction not essential to the war effort. Pennsylvania canceled its $50 million construction program. Indiana rescinded all bridge contracts and North Carolina abandoned all contracts already let except $3,145,000 of high priority defense access projects. By the end of 1943, State work was down to bare bones maintenance and a diminishing number of defense access projects.

The maintenance was actually insufficient to keep up with the increasing needs. Periodic resurfacing and strengthening, so necessary to preserve the integrity of pavements, was greatly reduced and reconstruction practically eliminated. The result was the rapid advance of decrepitude accompanied by soaring maintenance outlays as the State highway departments struggled to keep the ever-weakening highway plant in operation.

Rationing Highway Service

After the outbreak of war, the Government prohibited the manufacture of automobiles and the auto manufacturers converted their plants to arsenals for the production of tanks, aircraft engines and ordnance. The number of new cars produced dropped from 3,779,682 in 1941 to 222,862 in 1942 and only 139 and 610 in 1943 and 1944.[15] The few new cars available in 1942 were strictly rationed.

An acute shortage of rubber developed very early in the war and continued until the United States created its own supplies of synthetic rubber. The War Production Board rationed tires and recapping rubber to extend the dwindling supplies, but this did nothing to conserve the huge inventory of tires on the national fleet of 34.4 million vehicles. In July 1942, the President asked the States to reduce highway speed limits to 35 miles per hour, primarily to conserve rubber, but also to save fuel and engine wear.[N 2] Subsequent speed studies by the PEA in 15 States disclosed fairly good public acceptance of the reduced ​limit. The observers noted average speeds of 37 miles per hour for cars and 36 miles per hour for trucks, but 23 percent of the drivers continued to drive over 40 miles per hour.[17]

  1. ↑ There were no regular Federal-aid authorizations for fiscal years 1944 and 1945.
  2. ↑ It had been common knowledge for 20 years that high speed operation greatly shortened tire life. In 1942 and 1943, investigations by the PRA and the Iowa Engineering Experiment Station demonstrated that the life expectancy of tires driven on concrete pavements at 65 miles per hour was only 18,700 miles, but that if the speed were held to 35 miles per hour or less, identical tires had a life of 56,500 miles.[16]

By April 1942, fuel shortages were so severe in the eastern States that the Government imposed gasoline rationing, and by November 1942, rationing was imposed nationwide. This greatly diminished “non-essential” travel, but the volume of essential travel was still huge.

The mobilization of 1940–41 had shown in a startling way how dependent the United States had become on its highways for its very existence. Studies in Michigan showed that 13 percent of the defense plants received all of their materials by highway. Most of the remaining plants received at least 50 percent of their materials by highway and more than half of their outgoing products left that way. In February 1942, Commissioner MacDonald announced that only a small fraction of the 10 million workers required to man the defense plants could possibly be accommodated by the existing rail and bus transit facilities, and all the rest would have to move in private automobiles.[18] Another study in Kansas showed that 81 percent of the employees of a large aircraft factory lived more than 5 miles from the plant and 17 percent more than 10 miles away. Only 5 percent of the plant workers used public transportation; 93 percent depended on private automobiles.[19]

In the early years of the defense effort, it was generally understood that it would take time to build new highways or enlarge the old ones and that in the meantime it would be necessary to greatly improve the utilization of the existing highway and mass transit plants. To promote this utilization, the Secretary of War, in December 1940, appointed a Highway Traffic Advisory Committee composed of Commissioner MacDonald of the PRA and the presidents of AASHO, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The Secretary also asked that each State Governor appoint a State Highway Traffic Advisory Committee, and this was done early in 1941. The several committees then concentrated on local action plans to organize transportation at warplants so as to eliminate the need for costly road improvements.

Widespread staggered working hour programs reduced traffic peaks by 10 to 15 percent and also increased the utilization of buses and streetcars. In Atlanta a staggered hour plan had the effect of adding 90 buses to the city’s fleet of 455. Intense group riding campaigns resulted in hundreds of carpools and increased average car occupancy from two or less to 3.8, and in some cases even 4.2 occupants per car. Walking to work was encouraged as patriotic exercise, but the committees found that few workmen would walk if the one-way distance was more than 2 miles.[20]

Shrinkage of Highway Revenues

Rationing reduced not only nonessential travel, but highway revenues as well. Although nearly three million trucks and buses were produced during the 4 war years, total vehicle registration dropped by over 1.4 million as wear and tear took their normal toll, and thousands of owners laid up their cars for the duration.

The eastern States were the first to feel the financial pinch. By August 1942, Maryland gas tax collections were running $250,000 per month behind 1941. Iowa revenues dropped 33 percent in June 1942 as compared to the same month in 1941. The Public Roads Administration reported that following nationwide gasoline rationing, highway traffic dropped 35 to 40 percent below corresponding levels for 1941.

Even with the rationing of gas and automotive parts, workers at the Willow Run bomber plant in Michigan depended on private cars to go to and from work.

In some States this loss of revenue was not particularly serious since there were no capital improvement programs underway requiring large expenditures. The diminished revenues were sufficient to take ​care of bond service and maintenance. But other States, particularly those that had become accustomed to diverting large amounts of highway revenue to nonhighway purposes, underwent severe financial embarrassment. Highway officials and road user organizations that had preached for years against diversion viewed the predicament of these States with considerable relish, best express by the Engineering News-Record, a long-time foe of the diversionists.

Where reserved for highway purposes these declining funds are still relatively proportionate to requirements. But in those States where legislatures have made diversions to the general fund, relief, the school system or oyster propagation, the present decline in revenues has brought retribution that is harsh as it is just. The legislatures that avoided finding money for relief or for their school systems must now find money to keep their roads from going to pieces.[21]

Amidst the gloom of war, the shortages of everything and the wartime restrictions there was one piece of cheerful news. Motor vehicle traffic accidents dropped materially in 1942, not only in number but in the rate per 100 million vehicle miles of travel.[N 1] This was due to a combination of factors—reduced exposure, lower speeds and, probably, greater emphasis on safety as a contribution to the war effort.

  1. ↑ The fatalities in 1941 were 39,969 with a rate of 12.0 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. In 1942, deaths dropped to 28,309 total, or 10.6 per 100 million vehicle miles. Fatalities remained below the 1941 level until 1957.[22]

By October 1948, the Alaska Highway was ready to serve as an overland route, maintaining the U.S. link with Alaska.

Defense Road to Alaska

After the Pacific Fleet was crippled at Pearl Harbor, it seemed possible that the United States might be cut off from Alaska except by air. The U.S.–Canadian Permanent Joint Board on Defense recommended that a military road be built through Canada to Alaska, and the United States offered to build it. By mid-March 1942, the two countries agreed that Canada would supply the right-of-way and waive customs duties and the United States would build and maintain the road during the war and for 6 months afterward. The 1,400-mile plus route from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Big Delta, Alaska, was intended primarily to connect and supply a chain of strategic military airfields and provide an all-weather overland supply route to Alaska. As soon as the agreement with Canada was negotiated, the War Department requested the help of the PRA for locating and building the road.

Within a week of the agreement, U.S. engineer troops began cutting a pioneer road through the Canadian wilderness. During the season of 1942, the Army placed seven regiments on the project and, with the assistance of PRA location engineers and contractors, pushed the pioneer road through the entire distance to Big Delta. Meanwhile, the PRA was working as rapidly as possible on reconnaissance, survey, and plan preparation for the proposed all-weather road. In addition the PRA was busy mobilizing engineers, contractors and equipment for the huge job.

Time did not permit the usual procedure of preparing plans and specifications, advertising for bids and letting contracts. Instead, the PRA engaged four engineering firms as management contractors. These firms recruited American and Canadian construction contractors for the work, and by the summer of 1942, in a period of only 3 or 4 months, 52 contractors and 7,000 construction workers were mobilized in working ​camps along the route, widening, surfacing and build-ing sections of the Army’s pioneer road.[23] On November 20, 1942, 7 months and 17 days from start of work, a crude but motorable road was opened to truck traffic the entire distance to Big Delta.[24]

By the summer of 1943 the PRA had doubled the construction force and concentrated on further widening and improving the pioneer road as well as building new sections and some permanent bridges. At the peak of operations in September 1943, there were 1,850 PRA employees and 14,100 civilian employees of 81 contractors working with over 11,000 pieces of construction equipment on the job. As with the pioneer road, the bulk of the construction of the 1,420 miles of final highway was largely completed in a 4-month period at a final cost of $130.6 million.[25] On October 31, 1943, the PRA phased out its work on the all-weather truck route and turned the project over to the Army for maintenance.[26]

The Trans-Isthmian Highway

For years after completion of the Panama Canal, the only land link between the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the Canal was the efficient Panama Railroad, wholly owned by the United States Government. In 1939 the Army, concerned about the possibility of the railroad’s being knocked out by bombing or sabotage, recommended construction of a modern truck highway across the isthmus, and the State Department then negotiated a treaty under which the United States agreed to build the road from Colon across Panamanian territory to Madden Dam, and Panama agreed to supply the right-of-way.[N 1] Construction of the highway was assigned to the Public Roads Administration and the grading work was largely completed during the 1941 dry season.

When war was declared in December 1941, the Army urgently requested the PRA to finish the paving on a crash schedule extending into the wet season and also to accelerate work on a section of the Inter-American Highway extending from Chorrera to the strategic Rio Hato airfield. For both jobs the War Production Board assigned A-1 priorities. Despite the wettest dry season in years, the PRA and the Panamanian Government completed the 72 miles of concrete pavement and 42 bridges and opened both projects by July 1, 1942.

War Work on the Inter-American Highway

In December 1941, Congress authorized appropriations of $20 million as aid to the six Central American republics for the construction of the Inter-American Highway from the Mexico–Guatemala border to the Canal Zone. To be eligible for the aid, each country agreed to complete its part of the highway and to pay one-third of the cost. These assurances were received from the six countries by April 1942, and each with the help of the PRA developed a 4-year construction plan to push the road to completion.

As shipping losses to submarines mounted in early 1942, the Army became apprehensive that the United States might be cut off from the Panama Canal, and the General Staff decided to open a pioneer road through the remaining gaps in the Inter-American Highway, using military funds. The standards adopted by the Army for the pioneer road were much inferior to those agreed upon between PRA and the cooperating countries, but the Army agreed to follow the route chosen for the Inter-American Highway as closely as possible.

By mid-July 1942, the Chief of Engineers had assigned a staff to proceed with the pioneer road project. Contracts were made with the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador to complete the pioneer road in their respective countries using U.S. furnished equipment and with three American road contractors for the remainder. The PRA continued its work in Costa Rica and Panama and maintained engineering advisors to other countries where PRA assistance was requested.

The work began in Guatemala in November 1942, but ran into trouble almost immediately. The General Staff gave the Inter- American project a very low priority in its global schedule. Equipment and supplies essential for military operations elsewhere were grudgingly and sparingly committed to the pioneer road project. Stringent shipping restrictions also delayed the arrival of essential supplies. Finally, in October 1943, the Army decided the pioneer road was no longer strategically significant, withdrew the staff to other duties, and closed the project. The PRA continued construction on the project in Costa Rica. A short time later the PRA engineers returned to their technical assistance efforts in the countries working on their 4-year construction programs.

Postwar Planning

The Defense Highway Act of 1941 provided a small sum, $10 million, for postwar planning, and MacDonald was able to channel most of this, with the State matching funds, into projects on the interregional system proposed in the BPR’s toll road report of 1939.[N 2] However, actual planning proceeded rather slowly due to scarcity of engineers and planners, even though some States took extraordinary measures to overcome the manpower shortage by hiring high school students and older men and women for routine work. Urban expressways, such as the Bayshore Freeway in San Francisco and the Washington–Baltimore Expressway, predominated in most of this planning, but New York began studies for a superhighway system that would traverse the entire State from the New Jersey border to Lake Erie. Indiana made plans for rebuilding 60 percent of its antiquated State highway system on which the pavements were less than 20 feet wide.

  1. ↑ There was already a heavy duty highway from Madden Dam to the city of Panama built by the United States in 1931 as a construction access road to Madden Dam.
  2. ↑ Congress provided another $50 million for planning in the Act of July 13, 1943 (57 Stat 560).

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, opened late in 1940, had grossed $2.6 million in its first 11 months of operation—enough to pay all expenses with a good ​margin for bond payment.[27][N 1] Undoubtedly, the successful experience of this toll road had much to do with 1941 legislation in Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland and New York creating independent authorities to sell bonds and build toll roads. Similar bills in Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Wisconsin were defeated by narrow margins.[29]

The Pennsylvania experience seemed to prove that the motoring public wanted wide, high-speed highways at a much faster rate than they were being provided by the States and was willing to pay a stiff extra charge to obtain them. Nevertheless, the Government persisted in its opposition to toll roads, and on April 14, 1941, President Roosevelt appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee of prominent highway engineers and planners, “to investigate the need for a limited system of national highways to improve the facilities now available for interregional transportation, and to advise the Federal Works Administrator as to the desirable character of such improvements, and the possibility of utilizing some of the manpower and industrial capacity expected to be available at the end of the war.”[30] Commissioner MacDonald of the PEA, who was also chairman of the new committee, provided it with a working staff of the men who had been most closely identified with traffic research during the two previous decades.

Meanwhile, schemes for national superhighways were being proposed in and out of Congress. In October 1941, the chairman of the Missouri Highway Commission called for a comprehensive plan for a system of postwar limited access highways. The plans for these, he said, should be prepared immediately so that they would be ready when normal times returned.[31] A bill introduced into Congress in October 1942, would authorize a 25,000-mile network of 14 strategic routes costing $10 billion.[32] Finally, in July 1943, Congress instructed the Commissioner of Public Roads “to make a survey of the need for a system of express highways throughout the United States” and report his findings to the President and Congress within 6 months.

  1. ↑ While the financial experience of the turnpike was good, its accident experience was bad—worse than that of the Pennsylvania highway system as a whole. In less than a year after opening, the Commission imposed a 60 mile per hour speed limit to curb reckless speeding.[28]

The experience of the Pennsylvania Turnpike seemed to indicate that people wanted high-speed highways and were willing to pay extra for them.

The Interregional Highway Report

Much of the work for the report on express highways requested by Congress had already been done by the PRA and the President’s National Interregional Highway Committee. The PRA task force of experts assigned to work with the Committee analyzed at least six possible combinations of interregional routes to arrive at the recommended “optimum” system of 33,920 miles. This system included 4,470 miles within cities and 29,450 miles of rural highways. It comprised a little over 1 percent of the total street and ​highway mileage of the United States, yet the experts estimated that it would carry 20 percent of all vehicle miles of travel. It would directly connect all cities of 300,000 population and reach 59 of the 62 cities of 100,000 to 300,000 population.

The Committee found, as had the BPR in its 1939 report Toll Roads and Free Roads, that very little of the estimated traffic on the optimum system would be long-distance interregional traffic. Most of the traffic, and all of the high-density traffic, would occur within “zones of influence” around the cities, varying in radius from 35 miles for the largest cities to 6 miles for the small ones. Of the recommended system, 8,141 miles would fall within these zones of influence, and this mileage would include practically all of the highways and city streets expected to carry more than 10,000 vehicles per day. Of the remaining 25,779 miles, 20,300 would probably carry less than 3,000 vehicles per day, and thus require only 2-lane pavements.[33]

Because most of the traffic was shown by the State and PRA traffic studies to have origins or destinations within the cities, particularly their central business districts, the Committee concluded that there was little need for bypasses.[N 1] The interregional routes, therefore, would have to penetrate into the cities, where they would exert a tremendous influence in shaping city growth. They should, therefore, be planned in close cooperation with the city governments and planning authorities:

The immediate inference . . . is that the creation of such ample and efficacious traffic facilities as the improvement of the interregional routes would supply, will exert a powerful force tending to shape the future development of the city.

It is highly important that this force be so applied as to promote a desirable urban development. If designed to do this, the new facilities will speed such a development and grow in usefulness with the passage of time.[35]

The Committee recommended standards for the interregional highways but declined to estimate the probable total cost of the system. “Moreover,” they went on to say, “the usefulness and validity of an estimate of the total cost of a construction program that must inevitably extend over a period of perhaps 20 years and be affected by unpredictable changes in the general economy, in the habits and desires of the people, in the character of vehicles, and in other circumstances, would still be highly questionable.”[36]

However, the Committee did recommend that construction of the system be prosecuted at a rate of about $500 million per year in the rural sections and $250 million per year in the urban sections—a rate that would provide about 145,100 man-years of direct employment, and 323,400 man-years of indirect employment per year.

One of President Roosevelt’s strongly held convictions was that some of the increase in land values created by new highways should be recouped by the Government and used to pay for the highways. The Interregional Highway Committee avoided this ticklish matter in their report, but the President brought it up in his message transmitting the report to Congress, as he had in his message on the 1939 toll road report. “After all,” he wrote, “why should the hazard of engineering give one private citizen an enormous profit? If there is to be an unearned profit, why should it not accrue to the Government—State, Federal or both?”[37]

  1. ↑ The studies showed that only 4 to 6 percent of traffic entering the largest cities was bypassable and only 20 percent for the smaller cities and 50 percent for the smallest villages.[34]

The New Highway Charter

There were already a number of postwar highway proposals before the 78th Congress when it received the interregional highway report. One of these bills would set up a Rural Local Roads Administration independent of the PRA through which the counties could receive Federal aid without going through the States. The bill would give this agency $1,125 billion to begin operations.[38] Senate Bill No. 971, backed by AASHO, would provide $1 billion annually for 3 years divided equally between the Federal-aid system, urban extensions, and secondary feeder roads and would increase the Federal share of the cost to 75 percent. This bill would also create an interregional highway system.[39]

The perennial toll road bill, with added features, would establish an independent commission with authority to issue $10 billion in U.S. bonds to pay for a toll system of 8-lane military superhighways and for airports, with dams and powerplants to furnish light for the entire system.[40]

Another proposal would authorize an 18,000-mile system of free superhighways—three east-west from coast to coast and six north-south from border to border—with a system of airports, each 2 miles square, at the 18 intersections. Still another would authorize a defense highway across the United States to connect the Alcan Highway with the Inter-American Highway.

Fantastic as some of them were, these bills showed that there was still an insistent demand from an important segment of the public for long-distance through highways. This demand was coupled with a rising insistence that more attention be given to the strictly rural roads and an awakening interest in civil aviation.

The postwar highway bill that was finally enacted in 1944 after 9 months of congressional wrangling fell below the expectations of the Administration and the States, but was still the largest in history. It authorized Federal aid at the rate of $500 million per year for the three first postwar years, divided $225 million to the Federal-aid highway system, $125 million for urban extensions and $150 million for the principal secondary and feeder roads. These last were required to be spent on a secondary highway system selected by the State highway departments in cooperation with the local road officials and the PRA, but without any mileage or percentage limits. Congress authorized participation with Federal funds up to one-third of the cost of right-of-way, but specifically rejected the President’s suggestion for taking excess right-of-way for purpose of recoupment. Finally, the Act authorized a 40,000-mile National System of Interstate Highways but provided no funds specifically for its construction. ​

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 preserved all of the essential features of the Federal-State relationship that had been built up over the preceding years, while liberalizing Federal assistance in some areas, notably right-of-way. In passing it, Congress again beat off efforts by the toll road and superhighway extremists to impose a national system of trunk highways under Federal control on the country. The National System of Interstate Highways was intended to satisfy the demand for long-distance highways, but without strong funding, it could not possibly achieve this purpose in any reasonable time, as events in the next 12 years would demonstrate.

REFERENCES

  1. ↑ WPA Mobilization For Defense Starts, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 124, No. 24, Jun. 13, 1940, p. 829.
  2. ↑ PRA Demands Defense Priority For Federal-Aid Work, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 125, No. 10, Sept. 5, 1940 p. 307.
  3. ↑ Highway Needs of the National Defense, H. Doc. 249, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., p. 66.
  4. ↑ Id., p. 56.
  5. ↑ Editorial, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 127, No 23 Dec. 4, 1941, p. 785.
  6. ↑ H. H. Kelly, The Problem of Motor Vehicle Regulation, Public Roads, Vol. 13, No. 10, Dec. 1932, pp. 167, 168.
  7. ↑ Legislation to Raise Truck Weight Protested, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 128, No. 4, Jan. 22, 1942, p. 155.
  8. ↑ C. Vail, Regulation of Truck Transportation—A Challenge to Highway Departments, Convention Group Meetings—Papers and Discussions (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., 1943) pp. 10–15.
  9. ↑ H. Doc, supra, note 3, p. 63.
  10. ↑ F. N. Barker, The Development of Uniformity in State Regulations of Size and Weight of Vehicles, Convention Group Meetings—Papers and Discussions (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., 1943) p. 128.
  11. ↑ Bureau of Public Roads Annual Report, 1943, p. 25.
  12. ↑ Construction Machinery Purchases to be Placed on A-1 Priority Basis by WPB, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 128, No. 16, Apr. 16, 1942, p. 581.
  13. ↑ Bureau of Public Roads Annual Report, 1942, p. 43.
  14. ↑ War Cuts Into Personnel of Highway Departments, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 129, Sept. 10, 1942, p. 339.
  15. ↑ 1971 Automotive Facts and Figures (Automobile Manufacturer’s Association, Inc., Detroit, 1973) p. 3.
  16. ↑ Tire Wear and Costs, Public Roads, Vol. 24, No. 9, July–Sept., 1946, p. 248.
  17. ↑ J. T. Thompson, Wartime Highway Transportation Problems, Convention Group Meetings, St. Louis, Mo., Dec. 7, 8, 9, 1942 (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., 1943) pp. 114–124.
  18. ↑ Transport in War Period Dominates Atlantic States Highway Meeting, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 128, No. 10, Mar. 5, 1942, p. 368.
  19. ↑ Thompson, supra, note 17, pp. 114-124.
  20. ↑ Id.
  21. ↑ Gas Tax Diversion Backfires, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 129, No. 13, Sept. 24, 1942, p. 410.
  22. ↑ Accident Facts—1973 (National Safety Council, Chicago, 1973) p. 59.
  23. ↑ BPR, supra, note 11, pp. 29, 30.
  24. ↑ Alcan Highway Officially Opened—Trucks Go North, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 129, No. 22, Nov. 26, 1942, p. 740.
  25. ↑ R. E. Royall, Construction of the Alaska Highway (Public Roads Administration, Washington, D.C., 1945) pp. 69, 77.
  26. ↑ The Alaska Highway, H. Rept. 1705, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 26.
  27. ↑ Pennsylvania Turnpike Earns $2,600,000, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 127, No. 12, Sept. 18, 1941, p. 398.
  28. ↑ Transport in War Period Dominates Atlantic States Highway Meeting, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 128, No. 10, Mar. 5, 1942, p. 369.
  29. ↑ Brief News, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 127, No. 14, Oct. 2, 1941, p. 464.
  30. ↑ Interregional Highways, H. Doc. 379, 78th Con., 2d Sess., p. III.
  31. ↑ Programming Highway Construction to Meet Post-Defense Needs, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 127, No. 19, Nov. 6, 1941, p. 649.
  32. ↑ Nation’s Highway Departments Make Plans to Meet Present, Post War Needs, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 129, No. 15, Oct. 8, 1942, p. 465.
  33. ↑ H. Doc, supra, note 30, pp. 43–45.
  34. ↑ Id., p. 60.
  35. ↑ Id., p. 55.
  36. ↑ Id., p. 114.
  37. ↑ Id., p. V.
  38. ↑ New Local Highway Agency Proposed in Congress, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 131, No. 21, Nov. 18, 1943, p. 727.
  39. ↑ Three Billion Dollars Asked For Postwar Highway Projects, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 131, No. 5, Jul. 29, 1943, p. 179.
  40. ↑ Several Laws of Engineering Interest Enacted by 2d Session, 78th Congress, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 133, No. 1, Jul. 6, 1944, p. 3.
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