Location in relation to areas of large post-war employment release.—In his letter to the Federal Works Administrator, the President indicated his expectation that in the construction of an interregional highway system it would be possible to utilize some of the manpower and industrial capacity available at the close of the war. If such utilization is to be encouraged, a close relation is desirable between the location of the interregional routes and the principal places at which the release of war-occupied labor is to be expected.
Such correspondence in location would be advantageous, notwithstanding that the labor requirements and dispersion of war industries have caused an extensive migration of workers from their former communities to the places where they are now employed and where they will lose that employment when the war ends. The return of a peacetime economy may necessitate another and possibly reverse migration or at least a redistribution of the avoidable worker population. But it will be expedient to avoid if possible a precipitate rush from the war industry centers. At least temporary employment for considerable numbers of the workers that will be released should be provided in the general vicinity of their present jobs.
The routes of the recommended interregional system, particularly those that will stand at the close of the war in most immediate need of major improvement, are well located to supply the construction employment the President expects.
As indicated by the map, figure 15, remarkable correlation exists between the location of routes of the recommended system and the areas of greatest wartime employment increase. As it is to be expected that workers released by the cessation of war production will generally be most numerous where employment has increased most during the war, this map gives convincing evidence of the fortunate location of the recommended interregional routes for the post-war absorption of workers in a highway construction program. This result is especially interesting in view of the fact that the route locations were determined as those best fitted to meet the most important highway traffic requirements.
Location of the interregional system in relation to the strategic network.—War traffic on the highways—that to, from, and between the points of particular war activity concentration and between these points and the ports of embarkation-is moving in the longer distances over roads conditioned for normal peacetime travel, and mainly over routes of the strategic highway network of principal routes of military importance approved by the Secretary of War, as revised May 15, 1941. (See fig. 16.)
Within the limitations of its total extent, the recommended interregional system conforms closely to this strategic network.
As we now clearly see, the significance of the strategic network in such a total war as that in which the Nation is at present engaged must be interpreted in terms of the carefully precise descriptive title applied to it by the War Department. It consists of not all but only the principal traffic routes of military importance. In the present war a very large part of the whole highway system of the Nation is bearing a substantial share of the burden of war, but we are finding that in general the routes of the strategic network were well chosen as the principal routes.
