64
HIGHWAY NEEDS OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE
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.
Before a $100,000,000 ordnance plant suddenly sprang up in a little village in Indiana, this was a two-lane road carrying 700 vehicles a day. After plant operations began, traffic swelled to 14,000 vehicles daily, necessitating the widening of 11½ miles of the route to a four-lane divided highway.
