through Work Projects Administration projects sponsored by the post commanders, and in a few instances the Federal highway funds administered by the Public Roads Administration, are available to effect required improvements.
It is assumed that any further provision that may be necessary to effect required improvements of roads of this class will be reported by the War and Navy Departments, which have exclusive jurisdiction. Therefore, no recommendations in this regard are made in this report.
Access roads.—The required program of access road improvement is highly dynamic. Indicated needs are growing from day to day as the general defense program matures.
Some of the military and naval reservations and defense industries are being newly established on land previously occupied by very small populations. Many are being substantially enlarged. Practically all are being greatly expanded in population and in motor transport and mechanized equipment facilities.
In the creation of new areas and the expansion of old ones, reservation. limits are being extended in many cases over existing roads and occasionally over important highways . Since it is usually desirable or necessary to exclude the public from the reservation areas, the intercepted roads must generally be closed at the reservation limits. One of the first and, to the civil authorities of the States and their subdivisions, one of the most urgent highway problems created by these reservation extensions, and similar industrial developments, is that of constructing new links around the reserved areas. Thus far no general provision has been made for payment of the cost of such essential restorations by the Federal Government. This, in the view of State and local governments, is an omission that leaves an unfair burden to be borne by them.
From the standpoint of the national-defense effort, the objective in access road construction is to provide adequate highway connections for the reservations and industrial areas with nearby main highways and railroads or other transportation services, and from neighboring towns and cities. From the standpoint of highway traffic, the developments planned at nearly all of the reservations and new industrial sites will be equivalent in their generation of highway traffic to the creation of a considerable number of new cities of very substantial size. The resident population at many of the Army camps will range between 2,000 and 78,000. At the Glenn L. Martin Co. plant near Baltimore, Md., to name a single industrial example, the number of workers engaged in the production of airplanes is expected to increase in a short time to 38,000 from the present employment of 13,000, which represents in turn an increase from 1,750 in 1930.
The reconnaissance surveys and conferences completed to date indicate a present need for the improvement of 2,830 miles of access roads to serve the 192 reservations thus far designated, at an estimated cost of $220,000,000.
These determined needs of reservation access-road improvement and additional road changes and improvements of as yet indeterminate extent and cost, required to serve vital defense industries, constitute, after the reservation roads, the most urgent of defense road requirements.
