With the end of the war, the greatest roadbuilding effort in history began in Michigan and across the country. Demobilization brought a surge in the demand for autos, led by veterans returning from Europe with a desire to see more of the country and the world about them. Registrations rose from 262,000 in 1918 to 325,000 the following year. Truck traffic grew apace and roadbuilding was seen as a panacea for unemployment problems stemming from the closing of war plants and the glut of discharged servicemen.
Michigan's state reward system had paid for improvements on 4,800 miles of roads, including 2,115 on the state highway system, but huge gaps remained in the state system. Motorists traveled through one county on a concrete road, traversed the next on macadam or asphalt and ended up in the third on gravel.
Rogers and good-roads advocates went to the people for help in raising needed funds. In the spring of 1919, voters approved a constitutional amendment to issue S50 million in road bonds, a tremendous sum at the time. Rogers promised 3,600 miles of trunklines that would benefit both the farmer and the city dweller, and Michigan industry. He led in developing a five-year construction program spending S10 million a year, plus S30 million in county funds. At the same time, U.S. Senator Charles E. Townsend of Jackson was busy in Washington with a bill calling for federal expenditures of S434 million over a five-year period, all for construction of highways built under federal specifications. Passed in 1921 after a two-year fight, it became known as the "Townsend Bill." It replaced the "bits and snatches" of local highway development by laying the groundwork for the federal-aid system of cross-state and interstate highways now in place nationwide.
In 1923, the highway department linked the Upper and Lower peninsulas with state-owned ferry service at the Straits of Mackinac. Prior to that, passengers and auto owners were at the mercy of operators of railroad ferries, who cared little whether they got the business or not. For terminals, a dock was purchased at St. Ignace and railroad facilities were rented at Mackinaw City. The service began July 31, 1923, first with a passenger ferry with capacity of 20 autos and later with two war surplus vessels that had been converted to ferries. Other ferries joined the fleet over the next three decades; and when they were put out of business in 1957 with the opening of the Mackinac Bridge, they had carried some 12 million vehicles and more than 30 million passengers.
Cost of road materials and labor raised construction prices in 1923 at a time when the state was running out of road bond funds. Road revenues could not meet new demands. A special commission suggested the state levy a one-cent tax on each gallon of gasoline sold. Rural communities generally favored the proposal, but it brought a storm of protest from the cities, where motorists preferred to stick with the existing levies on auto weight and horsepower.
The department eyed the controversy from a balcony seat. The argument raged until March of 1923 when state lawmakers adopted a two-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax. Gov. Alex J. Groesbeck, generally a strong good roads advocate, vetoed it as "an excessive burden on the automobile
11
