often on new location in undeveloped areas. If the margins thus taken under control are later required for expansion of the road facility, as must inevitably be the case in many instances, the acquisition costs will be at a minimum because of the arrested development of the lands affected.
The need for competent land authorities.—Many of the obstacles which block the efficient acquisition of lands for highways likewise serve as impediments to the ready assembly of lands for other public purposes. Revision of the present laws and practices, if broadly conceived, can serve to remove the outmoded features of land acquisition for all public purposes with a single effort.
The Committee recommends, wherever possible, that lands needed for development of the interregional highway system be acquired in conjunction with the acquisition of lands for adjacent housing, airport, park, or other public developments which the highways will be designed in part to serve. The mutual benefits of such a simultaneous and cooperative program of land assembly, the Committee believes, will be reflected in lower land costs, in a more rational land-use pattern, and in the elimination of all possible focal points of conflict between the various improvement programs concerned. To deal competently with the legal, financial, and administrative problems of such interrelated and mutually beneficial land acquisitions, the Committee recognizes a need for the creation of special land authorities, adequately empowered and financed, to acquire all lands needed for public purposes of any sort.
In its report, Toll Roads and Free Roads,[1] the Public Roads Administration recommended the creation of such a land authority by the Federal Government. The Committee concurs in the recommendation. It also recommends the creation of similar land authorities by the States and by cities and legally constituted metropolitan areas, and suggests further that provision be made for the cooperation of Federal, State, and city or metropolitan authorities under a Federal-aid plan which will enable the Federal agency to finance the acquisition of needed lands for highway and other public purposes and permit amortization of the costs by the State and local authorities over a long period of time.
These special authorities, concerned only with sound and efficient financing of land acquisition for all public purposes, would serve as instrumentalities to assure the avoidance of conflict between the land acquisition purposes of public agencies devoted to various developmental objectives, and to recover the total cost of all acquisitions by joint and supplementary measures of amortization.
The difficulties of land assembly are widely recognized as primary obstacles to the effective rebuilding of blighted areas at the cores of our great cities, an objective closely associated with one of the principal purposes of interregional highway development. The problems of land acquisition in this connection are so immense that they may be said to be virtually insoluble without government financial and directive assistance.
It is inevitable, therefore, that government authority should now be used as an aid in the efficient assembly and appropriate redevelopment of large tracts of blighted urban lands, in reverse of the use of
- ↑ See footnote 6.
