Highway Needs of the National Defense/Summary and Recommendations
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
THE NATIONAL SYSTEM OF INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS
The National System of Interstate Highways is the trunk-line highway system of the United States. It connects all the largest cities and most of the larger ones. On its rural sections it serves 20 percent of the traffic carried by all rural roads. Its urban sections thus far designated, to which further designation will add an almost equal mileage, now serves more than 10 percent of the traffic moving over all city streets.
This large measure of service is rendered by a network that includes only 1 percent of the country’s total mileage of roads and streets. Without doubt, this system forms the most important connected network within the highway system of the country for service of the economy of peace.
Strategic importance of the interstate system
The National Military Establishment has determined that this same system includes in its rural sections substantially the roads of greatest strategic importance for service of the highway necessities of war. The urban sections designated are rated with the same authority as of prime importance for wartime duty, and the additional urban designation desirable for service of wartime movements is identical in character with the additional needs of normal usage in peace. This additional designation, consisting largely of circumferential routes in and around the larger cities, should be completed as promptly as possible.
A substantial part of the street network of our cities and much of the rural road mileage improved during a period of 40 years past, is seriously obsolescent. Traffic has grown faster than the responsive improvement of the street and highway facilities. Of the entire street and highway network, the interstate highway system, its most important segment, is by and large the most seriously obsolescent part. In the general lifting of arterial highway standards that is now needed and overlong delayed, the routes comprising the interstate system should be among the first considered for improvement.
Condition of the system
Recent research and development have provided definite guides which determine in detail the standards of design required for the adequate service of traffic of specific volumes and classes. The proper application of these standards will not only assure a safe and efficient accommodation of present traffic; it will also provide for the expected greater traffic of the future a facility of continuing usefulness, if the size and weight of vehicles are held within the limits recommended.
The determined conditions of the interstate system have been weighed against these standards, and the system has been found seriously deficient. It is most deficient in its sight distances and in the width of its pavements, shoulders, and bridges. The sight-distance deficiencies are the result of defects of alinement and vertical curvature. These are fundamental defects. Their correction involves the necessity of much relocation and the obtainment of new or enlarged rights-of-way, accounting in large measure for the high cost of essential improvements.
The relocation proposed would shorten the total length of rural sections of the system by 384 miles, urban sections by 257 miles, a total reduction of 641 miles from the present length of 37,800 miles. Other improvements proposed would substantially increase the traffic capacity of the system, and speed the flow of travel over it with further advantage in the convenience and safety of the movement.
If in 1948 rural sections of the system had been improved as proposed, 1,400 lives lost in traffic accidents might have been saved. If in the same year the proposed improvement of urban sections had been completed, the savings of travel time alone thereby made possible, valued at a cent a minute, would have amounted to approximately four-fifths of an annual installment of the capital cost estimated, amortized over a period of 20 years.
Cost of needed improvements
The estimated cost of improvements proposed is approximately $11,266,000,000, of which $5,293,000,000 is for sections of the system within the urban areas of cities of 5,000 or more population, and $5,973,000,000 is for rural sections. These costs are estimated on the basis of prices of construction work prevailing in 1948. They may be lowered by a decline of prices in the future.
They are, however, the costs of improvements required now to adapt the system to the needs of its present traffic. As improvements are undertaken, ample provision should be made for the increased traffic that may be anticipated in a period of 20 years. This will increase the costs as estimated, but not greatly.
Capital requirements of such magnitude obviously cannot be met from the revenue of a single year. The improvement is needed now. In part it can be deferred, but deferral means the acceptance of greater costs in lives lost, in inconvenience, and in the actual expense of vehicle operation. Correction of the existing deficiencies by measures at least as costly must be made in any case whenever in the future further improvement is undertaken on the roads and streets now forming the system. Ina period no longer than 20 years, such improvement must be undertaken on every mile.
If the system is to be brought to a state of adequacy in this longest reasonable period, a capital investment averaging probably more than $500,000,000 per year will be required. No less provision can be economically justified.
Much greater economic and social benefit would result from a completion of the proposed improvement in a period far shorter than 20 years. Needs of the national defense further require a substantially more rapid improvement. The improvement can be so advanced with borrowed capital, and amortization over a period of 20 years will hold the annual revenue requirement, less interest, to the same amounts that would be required for a protracted improvement. The interest requirement would probably be more than equaled by benefits accruing to the increments of traffic the future will add to present volumes. Federal aid for interstate system improvement
Federal-aid funds authorized for the primary and urban Federal-aid systems are currently being allotted to projects on the interstate system at the rate of approximately $75,000,000 annually. No other highway expenditure of the Federal Government is more clearly justified by the national interest involved.
To provide for improvement of the system at a rate not slower than the essential minimum, consideration should be given to the advisability of the authorization of additional Federal appropriations earmarked for expenditure only on the interstate system in urban and rural areas. Funds so authorized should be apportioned among the States in such proportions as to permit substantially equal progress in the correction of existing deficiencies in all States.
In view of the extraordinary interstate and national interest attaching to the system, Federal participation in the cost of improvements made in a ratio greater than the normal 50 percent would seem appropriate.
Some States may elect to accelerate the necessary improvement of the system by borrowing capital. In any such case it would seem desirable that the Federal law permit future allotment of Federal funds to be applied to the retirement of the indebtedness incurred for such improvements, exclusive of interest, in the same manner as presently provided for participation in current costs of improvement.
CONTINUANCE OF AID FOR OTHER HIGHWAYS RECOMMENDED
The recommended provision of additional Federal funds earmarked for the interstate system should not be subtracted from the provision for other parts of the Federal-aid primary and urban system, nor from the provision for secondary roads. There are deficiencies on other primary routes, of the same character as those shown by this report to exist on the interstate system, and they are more numerous in proportion to the larger mileage involved.
The National Military Establishment has pointed out that there
may be additional routes, probably not exceeding a total of 2,500 miles, that are strategically as important as some now included in the interstate system. These are, doubtless, embraced in the Federal-aid primary system. Improvement of the principal secondary roads, long deferred, remains a present need whatever may be the provision for the primary roads, and these improvements also will contribute to a state of highway readiness for the national defense. The need for these other improvements is inferior only to needs on the interstate system.
The Federal Government should continue to authorize appropriations for the Federal-aid primary, urban, and secondary highway systems at rates not less than those established by the Federal-aid Highway Act of 1948.
DESIRABLE PROVISION FOR EMERGENCY CONSTRUCTION AND REPAIR OF ROADS AND BRIDGES
Before the outbreak of World War II there was recognized need for the construction or improvement of many sections of road required to give local access to new points of military and industrial concentration. After war began, these recognized needs quickly multiplied. Federal funds applicable to these access road purposes were not immediately available and, before they could be provided by special authorization of the Congress, the suddenly augmented traffic on many of the roads found them grossly inadequate. The resulting confusion and delays had a perceptible effect in retardation of the war effort.
Federal funds for emergency construction
It is impracticable to make definite plans long in advance of the event for avoidance of the repetition of a similar situation in the future. Assuming continuance of the Federal policy of appropriation for specific highway purposes, there will always be Federal funds authorized or appropriated for such specific purposes which could be diverted in emergency to other purposes. What is needed is permanent legislation authorizing the employment of such authorized funds for other purposes associated with the needs of national emergency declared by the President. The authority should be broad enough to cover national emergencies of war or peace, such as the necessity of access road construction incident to anticipated hostilities and necessities such as those experienced in consequence of the heavy snowfall of the past winter, and on other occasions as the result of major floods and other disasters. The legislation should authorize expenditures required for the making of essential surveys and the preparation of plans as well as for needed construction, and it should authorize Federal payment for war-necessitated construction up to 100 percent of the cost. Emergency repair and permanent rehabilitation of roads, including bridges, in disaster areas should be done under agreement with the State highway department and payment made therefor on the established pro rata for the regular Federal-aid highway program. The maximum sum to be available, without specific authorization, should be fixed by law, and provision should be made for subsequent replacement of amounts so used.
Stock piling of materials and equipment
The experience of World War II and recent major peacetime disasters indicate also the advisability of an amendment of the Federal Highway Act authorizing payment with Federal funds of a pro rata share of the cost of a continuous reserve or stock pile of certain highway and bridge materials. The freeze orders of World War II first stopped the flow of materials in commercial supply lines and then channelized them to consumers on a priority basis. Items in consumers’ possession were not affected by the freeze orders, but considerable time was required to obtain the permits requisite for the acquisition of the most essential construction and maintenance materials after the controls were established. In anticipation of a similar future situation it is desirable that the supplies of certain materials in possession of the State highway departments at any moment be sufficient to provide for the needs of a period long enough to effect the resumption of essential supply under the conditions of wartime regulation.
Of certain materials that are regularly required, the reserve should provide for the normal consumption of not less than a 6-month period. Among the more essential materials are aggregates for portland cement concrete and bituminous concrete, bituminous materials, cement, chlorides for the treatment of ice-coated pavements, culvert pipe, nails, paints, steel and timber piling, structural steel and timber, steel products other than bridging, storage batteries, antifreeze for motor-vehicle radiators, tires and tire chains, and assorted equipment repair parts.
For use in the quick replacement of bridges destroyed by floods, and equally essential as a precaution against possible need in the event of war, it would be desirable to place in storage with the several State highway departments a substantial stock of portable bridge units capable of incorporation in permanent structures.
The foregoing recommendations of stand-by fiscal and stock-piling provisions have the endorsement of the maintenance and equipment committee of the American Association of State Highway Officials.
Repair of damage on local roads
To make these fiscal and stock-piling provisions the more effective for use in civil disaster relief, they should be made applicable to the restoration of damaged roads and bridges of the cities and counties in States which, by appropriate State legislation, establish requisite control of the undertakings by the State highway department. A further useful provision, designed to facilitate the interstate loan of materials, equipment, and equipment operators, would be a Federal guarantee of the repayment of such loans and liabilities incurred for injuries to workmen.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
It is also suggested (1) that highway authorities should be represented through the Public Roads Administration and appropriate State highway departments on boards created to select sites for military and strategic industrial establishments to the extent necessary to assure efficient provision of highway connection, and (2) that adequate representation of highway and highway transport necessities should be provided for in any future establishment of agencies to apportion and ration war-essential materials in short supply.