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.
A third empowered the Commissioner of Public Roads, in approving Federal-aid highway projects to be carried out with the then unobligated funds apportioned to any State, to give priority of approval to, and expedite the construction of, projects recommended by an appropriate Federal defense agency as important to the national defense.
