Highway Needs of the National Defense/The War's Effect on the Highway Program
THE WAR’S EFFECT ON THE HIGHWAY PROGRAM
There was close agreement between the sums estimated as required in the 1941 report and the amounts subsequently authorized and expended. The amount estimated for access roads was specified as a minimum, not including some needs which at the time could not be estimated. The sum subsequently appropriated substantially exceeded this minimum estimate. As suggested by the report, the construction of access roads was the work of greatest urgency. It was work that simply had to be done to provide access of the barest adequacy to military reservations, war production plants, and sources of strategic war materials. It was, therefore, the class of road-building activity that encountered the least impediment in the various restrictive measures applied during the war. But this does not mean that the effort to carry out even this most necessary road-construction work was wholly unobstructed. On the contrary, it was beset constantly with indecision, delay, and restrictions often arbitrarily and unintelligently applied, that began with the approval of projects, continued through the endorsement of plans, and persisted to the completion of projects.
THE LESSONS LEARNED
The fact that the strategic network improvement as provided for and as accomplished differed in widest measure from the estimated need does not mean that needs did not exist in the magnitude of the estimate. The estimate was extremely conservative. The existing needs, some of them of most serious character, simply were not met. For the most part, we went through the war with the highways we had at its beginning. Even the gravest deficiencies went unrectified. Not only construction, but also maintenance activity was radically curtailed by arbitrary controls imposed. Road surfaces deteriorated. On high military authority, roads were pronounced expendable.
In this experience of World War II, all concerned with responsibility for the condition of the country’s highways and with the efficiency of highway transportation for peace or war may find a valuable lesson. The lesson is that when war starts, major road building stops. The major facilities required for the service of peacetime traffic are the arterial highway facilities required for service in a future war and they must be built in time of peace. There is no reason to expect that the demands of combatant forces during a future war will be more tolerant of highway construction activity than they were in World War II.
WORK IN ADVANCE OF THE DEFENSE HIGHWAY ACT
The whole story of the work that was done to meet the more urgent highway needs of the last war is not told in the figures of table 2. Much had been done in advance of the passage of the Defense Highway Act of 1941—and even before the February 1 report was rendered—to prepare for the construction of needed roads, and actually to build some of them.
Early in 1940 the War Department, and somewhat later the Navy Department, had begun to request the assistance of the Public Roads Administration in studies of the condition and desirable improvement of roads leading to military and naval posts and establishments. Up to the date of the 1941 report 140 such studies had been completed and many more were subsequently undertaken and completed.
Provisions of the Federal Highway Act of 1940
The Federal Highway Act of 1940, approved September 5, 1940, had contained several permissive provisions designed to authorize acts deemed pees in preparation for the national defense. One of these authorized the Public Roads Administration to employ for the construction of pecncl desirable from the standpoint of the national defense, Federal-aid funds which it was expected would remain unexpended at the close of their period of normal availability. Another authorized the use of administrative funds of the Public Roads Administration—
to pay the entire engineering costs of the surveys, plans, specifications, estimates, and supervision of construction of projects for such urgent improvements of highways strategically important from the standpoint of the national defense * * * undertaken on the order of the Federal Works Administrator and as the result of request of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or other authorized national defense agency.
Provisions of the Emergency Relief Act
Similar provisions were carried in the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, fiscal year 1941, relating to the use of relief funds by the Work Projects Administration for planning and building roads important for defense purposes. While relief rolls remained, a total of $85,150,000 of relief funds matched by sponsors’ contributions totaling $28,750,000 was expended, largely for the construction of roads in Army and Navy reservations but also, in part, for access roads to military reservations and defense plants.
Response of the States
Generally, the State highway departments complied readily with requests for the use of their apportioned Federal-aid funds for purposes of study and the planning of access-road improvements. When it came to the construction of such roads, however, the remaining restrictions of the Federal law and similar provisions of State law often presented insurmountable obstacles. Many of the roads were included in neither the Federal-aid nor State highway systems, and many were of such character and location as to be ineligible for construction even with the available Federal-aid secondary road funds.
No such restrictions prevented the application of Federal-aid funds to the strategic network and the States willingly responded to the request of the Public Roads Administration for allotment of as much as possible of the currently available funds to the correction of deficiencies of that system.
Federal-aid programs in 1941
At the end of October 1941, shortly prior to the passage of the Defense Highway Act of that year, the combined Federal-aid programs consisted of projects for the improvement of 11,271 miles of road at an estimated total cost of $397,812,700 including the Federal-aid allotment of $224,135,000. Of these totals, 2,884 miles at an estimated construction cost of $144,392,900 were on the strategic network, and 197 miles estimated to cost $16,584,400 were access roads. Projects particularly directed to the meeting of defense needs, therefore, constituted at that time 27 percent of the mileage and 40 percent of the cost of the current program. An unobligated balance of apportioned funds, the latest of which were those authorized for the fiscal year 1942, remained available for further high-priority uses, to be augmented shortly by apportionment of the fiscal year 1943 funds, last of the prewar authorizations.
TOTAL AMOUNT OF WORK DONE
To the extent that use of these regular Federal-aid funds for access roads and strategic network projects was permitted they were applied for the most part to the needs contemplated in the 1941 report. In final event, these funds, together with the special defense highway appropriations, provided for the improvement of 1,678 bridges and 7,763 miles of road in the strategic network at total cost of $418,662,500, and for the construction of 1,254 bridges and 12,914 miles of access roads at total cost of $356,104,200.
In terms of total cost the actual improvements of the two classes compare with needs estimated in the 1941 report as follows:
| Strategic network improvements: | |
Estimated in the 1941 report, total cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$458,000,000 |
Actually constructed, total cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
418,662,500 |
| Access roads: | |
Estimated in the 1941 report, minimum total cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
220,000,000 |
Actually constructed, total cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
356,104,200 |
The rates at which these two classes of work were undertaken, in terms of total cost, are shown in figures 6 and 7. The rates of undertaking several classes of access-road projects, varying in the character of the objective area, are shown in figure 8.
