Bill Kulsea and Tom Shawver

“ Michigan’s prowess in planning and building superhighways was recognized by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 1977, designating this nine-mile stretch of US-31 Freeway in Oceana County as first-place winner in national competition.
Across the country, there was a general feeling that personal freedom and prosperity were somehow linked to the privately owned automobile. Combined with the creation and growth of a vast freeway system, it gave millions of motorists a mobility far greater than any they had known before. Autos sold faster than ever and travel mileage rose even faster. ”

“ Despite its success, administration of the massive and successful highway program stirred criticism as early as the 1960's. Motorists felt they were getting the roads they were paying for through taxes. Some government reformers, however, believed the job of elected highway commissioner was a remnant of a bygone era, noting that Michigan was the last remaining state to have one. They favored an apppointed part-time commission to set policy for the department, which would be administered by a full-time director. ”

“ He was the first commissioner to begin a program of beautifying the state highway system.
By the end of the 1930's, Michigan enjoyed a national reputation as a state with a top-rated highway sy­stem. Rising standards of profes­ionalism and growing income from federal and state sources enabled the highway department to expand and upgrade the trunkline system and make it safer and smoother for burgeoning traffic volumes. In the middle of the decade there was one car for every 3.9 residents in a population of 4.8 million. ”

“ Between 1905 and 1930, Michigan built a serviceable network of high­ways on what once were Indian paths, military roads, wagon roads, plank roads and farm-to-market roads. The age of mud was over; the age of concrete was moving in.
During the Depression in the 1930's, federal aid money for highways was split between the Highway Department and the Welfare Department. Thousands of "reliefers" were put to work on highways as a means of putting unemployed men back to work. ”

“ John C. Mackie, who ran the Department during Michigan's greatest freeway con­struction years, was the last elected commissioner.
The goal was a network of freeways to connect every city of more than 50,000 population with four-lane, divided, limited access highways in five years. The cost: $1.2 billion. The word, "freeway," fit. The highways would have no traffic lights, no hazards from intersecting roads or roadside obstacles; curves that would easily accommodate traffic moving at 70 miles an hour in rural areas. ”

“ Earle predicted counties and cities and the state, even the federal government, eventually would coop­erate to build good highways and connecting roads. He was the first to urge a statewide system of roads, not just farm-to-market, hit-and-miss roads that ignored cross-country traf­fic. He also played a key role in construction of the nation’s first full mile of rural concrete highway. It was built on Woodward Avenue in De­troit between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road, a 17-foot, eight­ inch-wide marvel that drew observers from all over the world. ”

“ VanWagoner, a young civil engineer from Oakland County. He succeeded Dillman in 1933 and served through 1940, the year he was elected governor–the only highway commissioner to reach that goal. An open-faced man with a wide smile and a hearty laugh, he built an agency highly conscious of public relations and preached that it needed all the dollars it was getting, and more, to ensure a good highway system. To potential raiders of the highway trust fund, VanWagoner said: "Highway engineers are technicians, not magi­cians. ”

“ As more and more cars took to the highways in the 1930's, Michigan became a national leader in developing techniques to improve highway safety. Here, safety engineers tested the effectiveness of a guardrail. ”

“ Horses pulling a primitive grader was a standard maintenance technique for Michigan roads in the "Age of Mud."
Ely ably used the department to promote more and better roads. From the outset of his four-year term he developed a communications clearing-house for local roadbuilders, using his staff, with Frank Rogers as the deputy and chief engineer, and the massive collection of information compiled in the Earle administration. ”

“ The Automobile Tax Law effective in 1916 was Michigan’s first weight tax for automobiles, taxing passenger cars at 25 cents per horsepower and 25 cents per 100 pounds of weight. The levy on motortrucks was 15 cents, with half of all proceeds going to the state highway department and half to the counties, all to be used for highway purposes. A law promoted by a beauty­-conscious Rogers authorizing the highway department to plant trees along all state reward roads. ”

“ Rail freight systems also suffered financially, and some went into bankruptcy. Nearly 1,000 miles of freight lines in Michigan were threatened with abandonment.
Rescue efforts began early in the decade. In 1972, the Legislature raised the gasoline tax from seven to nine cents a gallon. One-half cent of the increase—yielding about $22 million a year—was diverted into general transportation programs, chiefly bus and rail. The State Supreme Court upheld the legisla­tion, saying it fell within the Legisla­ture's constitutional prerogative to "define by law" money spent for highway purposes. ”

“ The 14-mile-long highway carried defense workers to and from work at a bomber plant near Ypsilanti.
Ziegler inherited some grim years for roadbuilding. Michigan's vast indust­rial resources produced one-eighth of America's entire war output and nearly four-fifths of that was trans­ported over state highways. The older ones took a terrific beating, even though auto travel declined sharply. The gasoline tax, the high­way department's only source of revenue, dropped by more than half during the war years. ”

“ While new highways were being built and improved, other modes of trans­portation in Michigan were left to fend for themselves. Municipal and intercity bus services were declining, or vanishing, because of low rider­ship. Increasingly, the old, the young, the disabled, the chronically ill, the poor had no regular, reliable means of travel. ”

“ A highway system is a public utility and must be kept alive with tax dollars." Early in his administration, he hired G. Donald Kennedy and Lloyd B. "Dutch" Reid, fellow engineers and administrators from Oak­land County, as his top assistants.
When the use of highway revenues for other than road purposes was banned by constitutional edict in 1938, the Legislature followed up with a law that distributed gas and weight tax proceeds among the state, the counties and the cities and villages. ”

“ Tourism became more and more a year-around industry and commerce and manufacturing, as well as the trucking industry serving them, became heav­ily dependent on good highways. The department adopted a "bare
Congressional approval of a national interstate freeway system in 1956 triggered the greatest highway-building program in history. Michigan led the way in building its share, typified by this battery of men and machines laying pavement for I-96 in southern Michigan in 1962. ”

“ Higher safety standards and im­proved design made driving safer and easier and speeded the flow of traffic. So did new and improved materials and construction methods, traffic and safety devices and spot improvements
Interstate 75 Freeway in Cheboygan County was named by Parade Magazine as the most beautiful stretch of highway built in the United States in 1963. that made better use of existing highways. All contributed signifi­cantly to Michigan's economic growth. By the end of the 1960's, Michigan's population had climbed to nearly nine million. ”

“ State pay­ments of S25O to $1,000 a mile typically paid about one fourth of the total cost.
Earle's ideas were a mirror of future road progress. He advocated use of trained civil engineers to plan and supervise construction of roads and used his state office and the state reward system to encourage local officials to do the job professionally and well. In 1907, he persuaded the Legislature to abolish the ancient and highly inefficient statute labor system for road improvements. It allowed a farmer and a team of horses to work out in a day or two his share of local road taxes. ”

“ Advancing technology steadily improved efficiency of highway construction, exemplified by this "train" of pavement-laying machinery developed in the 1960's. It allows continuous production of steel-reinforced concrete roadways. ”

“ State and federal monies enabled municipal bus sy­stems to buy modern vehicles, up­ grade their facilities, improve services and, in some cities, build intermodal terminals to accommodate a variety of transportation services, including taxis and passenger trains.
Starting with three vans and 31 state employees in April, 1977, the Department-sponsored vanpool program for state employees became the largest such program in the nation by mid-1980, involving 120 vans and 1,350 persons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Traffic jams and stop-and-go traffic were commonplace in the pre-freeway era as millions of families became auto owners. This is US-25 (Gratiot Avenue) in Detroit just before the outbreak of World War II in 1941. three-fourths of his staff into the project, and called on road contrac­tors all over the state for help. Crews worked day and night, seven days a week, and the expressway was built in 11 months. Thousands of workers were able to get to and from their jobs without traffic snarls. VanWagoner dedicated the highway Sept. ”

“ Frank Rogers, who had served eight years under Earle and Ely, became highway commissioner by choice of the people, who voted their choice for the first time after the Legislature in 1909 had stripped the governor of power to make the appointment. ”

“ Costs had climbed, but the roadways also were smoother and safer than ever before, thanks to constant improvement in design and engineering, materials and equipment and the fruits of research and testing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Rogers took over, there were 60,438 motor vehicles registered in Michigan, more than 20 times the number registered when the highway department opened for business eight years earlier. A total of 1,754 miles of roads had been built under the state reward system. The average cost of building a mile of concrete road was $15,000. ”

“ Three-fourths of the new money went for highways, roads and streets and lawmakers ordered the state's share to be spent on completing a backbone system of freeways and upgrading specific other major high­ways. ”