HIGHWAYS FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE
A REPORT TO THE ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY, MR. JOHN M. CARMODY, BY THE PUBLIC ROADS ADMINISTRATION
Defense roads and highways, as classified in this report, have been designated as such by one of the three major defense agencies—the Army, the Navy, and the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. All highways which serve the business of the public have a corresponding degree of utility in the national defense, but the intensive specialized operations characteristic of the present concentration upon training men, producing ships, planes, equipment, ordnance of all kinds and munitions, and the building of defense bases, generate localized highway traffic of large and growing magnitudes.
These are new or greatly expanded highway transport services that must be provided for first and quickly.
This report recognizes the continuing, serious highway problems generated by 32,000,000 motor vehicles now in use. The first important trend of the defense program has been to concentrate large numbers of these vehicles in relatively small areas, many removed from well developed local and main roads, without materially diminishing the volume of traffic already existing on the improved rural roads and city streets. Even should future conditions conceivably result in limiting to a degree some of the present volume of highway use, the business of the Nation in the immediate future, including the speeding up of defense operations, is geared to the motor vehicle for local, short-haul transportation. Considering the utility of the highways and streets as a whole, exclusive of those specifically designated as defense highways, the normal maintenance operations and a program of replacements of worn-out and inadequate surfaces, perhaps below a normal construction program but none the less an irreducible minimum, are essential.
DEFENSE ROAD PROGRAMS DEFINED
Comprehensive studies of the major objectives to be served determine that two general programs are necessary to provide needed highway facilities and to improve inadequate sections where these exist:
- First. The road program primarily required for defense operations.
- Second. The road program required to improve inadequate sections of the strategic network.
