Interregional Highways/Introduction
INTERREGIONAL HIGHWAYS
Report and Recommendations of the National Interregional Highway Committee
INTRODUCTION
Construction of the present main highway system of the United States began in the later years of the horse-and-buggy era of highway transportation. At that time the Nation possessed a rural road network almost as extensive as at present, but it was almost wholly unimproved. By necessity all travel by road was of the shortest range.
In the cities, on the other hand, most of the streets were paved, some with cobble but many with smooth asphalt and brick. It was mainly the desire of new-fledged motorists in the cities for a comfortable ride into the country beyond the reaches of their paved streets, the similar deferred hope of more humble cyclists, and the competing aims of merchants in each town and city to enlarge or at least to hold, each his own rural trade, that prodded a long-talking “good roads movement” into actual construction.
The construction of roads begun, years of promiscuous building followed. Finally the builders awakened to the hopelessness of ever joining the thousands of disconnected little pieces of roads those years had produced. They began to realize the need for systematically classifying the vast road network and giving preferential order to the improvement of the portions of greatest use potential.
The original Federal Aid Road Act, passed in 1916, did not require such a classification. But by that time a few States, seeing the light, had created State highway systems of selected routes—usually those routes joining their several county seats and larger towns and cities.
To this sound principle of classification and preferential improvement beyond any other the means of the rapid and orderly subsequent development of the main highways—the Federal Highway Act of 1921 gave endorsement and national extension. It required designation of the Federal-aid highway system and confined to this system all Federal funds then and thereafter to be appropriated for aid in road improvement—a restriction that was to remain in effect unaltered for many years.
At that time, the beginning of the century’s third decade, the unimproved sections of roads chosen to make up the newly designated Federal-aid system were still far longer in the aggregate than the length of those that had been in some manner constructed. Most of the State highway systems were at the same early stage of development.
But the rapid upswing of motor-vehicle use had already set in. Each successive year more road-improvement revenue was coming in, largely from fees paid for vehicle registrations, from new motor-fuel taxes and from the Federal Treasury. The purpose of State and Federal road agencies was to use these revenues to extend as rapidly as possible a useful measure of improvement to the entire selected mileage of main roads and thus to narrow as quickly as practicable the wholly unimproved gaps.
The measure of improvement considered necessary was usually less than the costly ideal which, by consuming much revenue on little mileage, would have delayed longer the improvement of other sections. It was expected that an initial limited improvement of each section would be followed in due course by a secondary stage when the progress of improvement of the system as a whole should permit the further expenditure. This was the policy of stage construction. It was a wise and useful policy as applied in the design of road surfaces. Its mistakes were its acceptance and fixation of obsolescent road alinement and its failure to anticipate the need of rights-of-way of greater width than those that in all previous time had been considered ample.
These are pardonable mistakes. When they were made, the high speeds at which motor vehicles can now travel were generally unforeseen and probably unforeseeable. The standards of alinement required by modern speed would then have been considered fantastic. The great increase of vehicle registration and traffic volume was anticipated too late, but even if it had been foreseen earlier, lack of necessary legal and popular sanctions would have prevented a forehanded acquisition of the wider rights-of-way that widened and divided roadways require.
First reasons for immediate designation of interregional system.—Past mistakes of main road location and rights-of-way neglect are understandable, but their consequences today emphasize the need for designating and preferentially improving an interregional system. For, paradoxically, the country’s most important highways which will constitute the large part of such an interregional system are the ones that have suffered most in their improvement because of these mistakes.
The explanation of the paradox is that these roads, in recognition of their prime importance, were among the earliest of our highways to be durably improved. Structurally, many of these improvements are still embarrassingly sound; but in location, in traffic capacity, and in their lack of most of the features of modern highway design that make possible the safe operation of vehicles at high speeds, they are badly obsolescent.
Most of them have long since repaid their cost in the benefits they have yielded to the heavy traffic that has moved over them. As they are rebuilt, as soon they must be, they should be built to the highest modern standards, on locations and within rights-of-way where they will have the prospect of long and beneficial service. That such an improvement of these main arterial roads of the Nation may proceed consistently in all parts of the country, that all may agree upon the particular roads comprising the national routes in all regions and in all States, and that preparations may now be made for beginning the systematic improvement of these roads in the first post-war years—these are the first reasons indicating the necessity for immediate designation of an interregional system. Other reasons for immediate designation.—Another consequence of past policies is the widely recognized gross inadequacy of the accommodation afforded by city streets for the heavier streams of arterial travel. Two decades ago the most obstructive deficiencies existed on the rural roads. City streets were relatively ample in their traffic capacity. Today these conditions are reversed. It is within and in the vicinity of the cities and metropolitan areas that through travel now experiences its most serious resistance and delays, resistance and delays that are abundantly shared by the heavy intraurban local traffic that tends to congregate on the same arterial routes.
Twenty years ago when the Federal Highway Act and many of the State highway enactments prohibited the expenditure of limited Federal and State funds for improvement of the transcity connections of the Federal-aid and State highway systems, the prohibition was not unreasonable. It was instead a necessary and logical recognition of the superior need of rural highway improvement. Now, with congestion of the transcity routes replacing rural highway mud as the greatest of traffic barriers, emphasis needs to be reversed and the larger expenditure devoted to improvement of the city and metropolitan sections of arterial routes. That the particular locations of these routes may be agreed upon in common by Federal, State, and municipal authorities who will share the responsibility for arterial highway improvement, that the desirable standards of that improvement may be established and commonly accepted, and that plans may at once be laid for a prompt post-war beginning of the highly essential construction work-these are other compelling reasons for the designation of an interregional system.
Optimum system proposed.—Clearly recognizing the present need, the President in his letter of April 14, 1941, to the Administrator, Federal Works Agency, appointed the National Interregional Highway Committee and directed it to review existing data and surveys and to outline and recommend a limited system of national highways designed to provide a basis for improved interregional transportation.
In all its deliberations and in the recommendations which follow, the Committee has been guided by the President’s expressed hope that it would hold national needs paramount over the needs of sections and localities. Consistent with the purpose of interregional connection and the limitation of total mileage, it is believed that the system recommended will serve as large a proportion of the total highway traffic of the Nation as it is possible to attract to any system of the same extent.
The cities and metropolitan areas of the country are known to include the sources and destinations of much the greater part of the heavy flow of traffic that moves over the Nation’s highways. The system of interregional highways proposed, within the limit of the mileage adopted, connects as many as possible of the larger cities and metropolitan areas regionally and interregionally. For this reason, although in miles it represents scarcely over 1 percent of the entire highway and street system, it will probably serve not less than 20 percent of the total street and highway traffic.
The wealth of factual information available to the Committee indicates clearly that any other system, either materially larger or smaller than that proposed, would have a lesser average utilization. The limiting mileage adopted may therefore be accepted with confidence as very close to the optimum mileage which will afford the greatest possible service per mile.
The Committee had for its consideration all the data amassed by the Public Roads Administration for its report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, which was transmitted by the President to the Congress in 1939 and published as House Document No. 272, Seventy-sixth Congress, first session. In that report two systems were defined, one of approximately 14,200 miles and the other of about 26,700 miles. The latter was proposed as an interregional system.
Subsequently, the Public Roads Administration reexamined its data and made minor changes and small additions to the published system, increasing its length to 29,300 miles. The facts suggesting these changes were available for the Committee’s review, as were also the voluminous data amassed for selection of the strategic network of principal highway routes shown on a map approved by the Secretary of War, as revised May 15, 1941.
Finally, at the Committee’s direction, a staff supplied by the Public Roads Administration made studies of three additional systems, one of approximately 48,400 miles, one of 36,000 miles, and one of about 33,920 miles which is the recommended system.
In the selection of all of these systems, one common objective prevailed: To incorporate within each of the several mileage limits adopted, those principal highway routes which would reach to all sections of the country, form within themselves a complete network, and jointly attract and adequately serve a greater traffic volume than any other system of equal extent and condition.
All facts available to the Committee point to the sections of the recommended system within and in the environs of the larger cities and metropolitan areas as at once the most important in traffic service and least adequate in their present state of improvement. These sections include routes around as well as into and through the urban areas. If priority of improvement within the system be determined by either the magnitude of benefits resulting or the urgency of need, it is to these sections that first attention should be accorded.
Obviously, it is not possible by any limited highway system, whatever the relative importance of its constituent routes, to serve all the needs of the Nation’s traffic. Nor is it reasonable to assume that in and near the cities the routes included in such a limited system will if improved, provide a complete solution to the serious problem of city traffic congestion. Particularly in the cities, many other routes are probably of substantially equal if not greater importance, and improvement of the system routes should, therefore, not be advanced ahead of others of similar or greater local importance. In this connection the Committee has been restricted in its choice because the President directed it to select an interregional rather than a local system, and to consider national above local needs.
The Committee believes it would be a mistake to regard the interregional system as an object of exclusive attention, even by the Federal Government, or to concentrate upon it all or a disproportionate part of any effort and funds that may be applied to highway improvement. The Federal Government has substantial interests in many other roads and possibly other city arteries. Its assistance should not be confined to the routes included in the recommended limited system. Nevertheless it is important, both locally and nationally, to recognize this recommended system and the routes that comprise it for what they are as that system and those routes which best and most directly join region with region and major city with major city.
And with such recognition, it is desirable, in all Federal, State, and local highway improvement programs, to give to this system and to these routes, promptness and preference of attention, consistency of plan, and a large share of available financial means. This will be necessary for its progressive and balanced improvement at a rate sufficient to halt the present obsolescent trend of constituent routes and to substitute a reasonably rapid movement toward complete adequacy.