Marine Corps base, United States destroyer base, Army and Marine cantonments, three airplane plants, and housing projects for military personnel and for aircraft employees.
In such cases as these, arrangements are being made to consider jointly the access-road necessities of all reservations an<d industries within the defined areas.
At all conferences, regardless of the type of establishments under consideration, effort is being made to reach definite decisions in respect to: (1) The location, general character, and approximate costs of the access-road improvements and other road changes that are necessary and the order of each in priority of need; (2) the money available for such improvements from each of the several classes of Federal funds, and the State or local funds available to match the Federal funds where such matching is required; (3) the amounts of State or local funds available for expenditure without Federal matching; and (4) the particular project application of all available funds. Such decisions are facilitated in most areas by the reconnaissance studies of the Public Roads Administration.
To the extent that funds are found to be available, arrangements are made at the conferences for the initiation of Federal-aid or W.P.A. projects by State or local authorities. Such projects may cover the survey and planning of improvements, or their construction, or both.
Generally, it is found that the State highway departments are willing to agree to th e use of the apportioned Federal-aid funds for the survey and planning of the necessary improvements. These funds are available for such purposes, unmatched with State funds. Wherever there is reasonable assurance that plans thus developed by the State highway departments and approved by the Public Roads Administration will be carried out, the Public Roads Administration has indicated that it will approve the necessary survey projects to be initiated by the State highway department. The Work Projects Administration also has indicated its willingness to approve Work Projects Administration survey projects in areas where the availability of qualified relief personnel and other conditions permit.
In respect to the actual construction of needed improvements, conferences thus far held indicate that the effort to apply each of the several classes of Federal funds now provided will encounter serious obstacles.
Many of the roads involved are not now included in the Federal-aid highway system and are not of such character as to make them eligible for inclusion in that system. For the construction of such roads, the apportioned Federal-aid highway funds are, therefore, not available.
In many cases, these roads outside the Federal-aid system can be considered secondary or feeder roads only by a very liberal interpretation of the act making provision for the construction of roads so defined. For these roads, then, the use of the apportioned secondary- or feeder-road funds is of questionable propriety.
Very generous reductions of normally required sponsors' contributions to W. P. A. projects will to an extent supply the inducement necessary for obtainment of State and local cooperation in access-road improvement. These reductions are permissible under the authority conferred by the 1941 Emergency R elief Appropriation Act. However, the limit imposed on the use of this authority to make reductions
