limiting mileage adopted may therefore be accepted with confidence as very close to the optimum mileage which will afford the greatest possible service per mile.
The Committee had for its consideration all the data amassed by the Public Roads Administration for its report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, which was transmitted by the President to the Congress in 1939 and published as House Document No. 272, Seventy-sixth Congress, first session. In that report two systems were defined, one of approximately 14,200 miles and the other of about 26,700 miles. The latter was proposed as an interregional system.
Subsequently, the Public Roads Administration reexamined its data and made minor changes and small additions to the published system, increasing its length to 29,300 miles. The facts suggesting these changes were available for the Committee’s review, as were also the voluminous data amassed for selection of the strategic network of principal highway routes shown on a map approved by the Secretary of War, as revised May 15, 1941.
Finally, at the Committee’s direction, a staff supplied by the Public Roads Administration made studies of three additional systems, one of approximately 48,400 miles, one of 36,000 miles, and one of about 33,920 miles which is the recommended system.
In the selection of all of these systems, one common objective prevailed: To incorporate within each of the several mileage limits adopted, those principal highway routes which would reach to all sections of the country, form within themselves a complete network, and jointly attract and adequately serve a greater traffic volume than any other system of equal extent and condition.
All facts available to the Committee point to the sections of the recommended system within and in the environs of the larger cities and metropolitan areas as at once the most important in traffic service and least adequate in their present state of improvement. These sections include routes around as well as into and through the urban areas. If priority of improvement within the system be determined by either the magnitude of benefits resulting or the urgency of need, it is to these sections that first attention should be accorded.
Obviously, it is not possible by any limited highway system, whatever the relative importance of its constituent routes, to serve all the needs of the Nation’s traffic. Nor is it reasonable to assume that in and near the cities the routes included in such a limited system will if improved, provide a complete solution to the serious problem of city traffic congestion. Particularly in the cities, many other routes are probably of substantially equal if not greater importance, and improvement of the system routes should, therefore, not be advanced ahead of others of similar or greater local importance. In this connection the Committee has been restricted in its choice because the President directed it to select an interregional rather than a local system, and to consider national above local needs.
The Committee believes it would be a mistake to regard the interregional system as an object of exclusive attention, even by the Federal Government, or to concentrate upon it all or a disproportionate part of any effort and funds that may be applied to highway improvement. The Federal Government has substantial interests in many other roads and possibly other city arteries. Its assistance should not be confined to the routes included in the recommended limited system.
