about 55 percent of these workers lived 5 miles or more from their places of employment; that about 73 percent of all employees traveled to and from work by private automobile; and that about 64 percent of the automobile users lived more than 5 miles from work.[1]
The results of studies in 13 States, conducted between 1942 and 1944 at 194 war plants, and covering 590,000 workers, indicated that 69 percent of the employees traveled to and from their jobs by automobile, 21 percent used mass-transit facilities, 8 percent walked, and 2 percent used other means, such as bicycles or boats.[2]
Supplemental gasoline rations for workers
Two policies of the utmost importance were adopted in support of the recognized need for worker transportation by private automobile. The first was the issuance, by the Office of Price Administration, of supplemental B and C gasoline rations to private automobiles. Just prior to the defeat of Germany and VE-day, there were outstanding approximately 14.5 million supplemental rations, issued for home-to-work and in-course-of-work driving, in which the travel allowance averaged 500 miles a month.[3] Passenger-car registrations during 1945 totaled 25.7 million. Although it is true that the privilege of supplemental rations was not infrequently abused, their importance to the war effort cannot be questioned.
Group riding
The second major policy was the promotion and encouragement of group riding in private automobiles. This was an essentially voluntary undertaking, except for the requirement (not always strictly enforced by the local war price and ration boards) that an applicant for supplemental rations for home-to-work driving must form a car club, or otherwise indicate that he was hauling passengers. Cooperators in this effort were the Office of Price Administration, which conducted a continuous promotional campaign, the Highway Traffic Advisory Committee, the Office of Defense Transportation, the managements of thousands of industrial plants, businesses, and governmental establishments, local committees, and civic groups. Although the campaign for group riding was less successful than some of its advocates had hoped, field studies[4] indicated that organized efforts, particularly in war plants, had resulted in more efficient use of passenger cars in home-to-work driving. Car-occupancy counts showed an increase between July 1942 and July 1944 from 2.2 to 3.3 persons per car at rural industrial locations. The general level of car occupancy was not raised to such a high figure, but it was materially higher than in prewar days.
THE MOTORTRUCK AS A PART OF THE ASSEMBLY LINE
Much of the success of our productive effort during the last war can be attributed to the availability and flexibility of motor-vehicle transportation. At the peak of production, many manufacturers of tanks, planes, ships, armament, and smaller items were operating on the basis of long-distance production lines which often traversed whole
- ↑ From mimeographed release, War Worker Transportation, by the Public Roads Administration December 1942.
- ↑ These data were summarized from various releases by the Automobile Manufacturers Association, and were reported in Automobile Facts and Figures, 1944–45, p. 22.
- ↑ Office of Price Administration, Mileage Conservation Letter, April 1945.
- ↑ Review of Progress in Car Sharing, report No. 4, Highway Traffic Advisory Committee to the War Department, August 1944.
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