Dwight D. Eisenhower

“ Together, the uniting forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear—United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts. ”

“ A sound Federal highway program, I believe, can and should stand on its own feet, with highway users providing the total dollars necessary for improvement and new construction. Financing of interstate and Federal-aid systems should be based on the planned use of increasing revenues from present gas and diesel oil taxes, augmented in limited instances with tolls. ”

“ Our gross national product, about $357 billion in 1954, is estimated to reach over $500 billion in 1965 when our population will exceed 180 million and, according to other estimates, will travel in 81 million vehicles 814 billion vehicle-miles that year. Unless the present rate of highway improvement and development is increased existing traffic jams only faintly foreshadow those of 10 years hence. ”

“ The obvious responsibility to be accepted by the Federal Government, in addition to the existing Federal interest in our 3,366,000-mile network of highways, is the development of the interstate system with its most essential urban arterial connections. ”

“ Because some sections of the primary system, from the viewpoint of national interest, are more important than others, the Congress in 1944 authorized the selection of a special network, not to exceed 40,000 miles in length, which would connect by routes, as direct as practicable, the principal metropolitan areas, cities, and industrial centers, serve the national defense, and connect with routes of continental importance in the Dominion of Canada and the Republic of Mexico. ”

“ Of all these, the interstate system must be given top priority in construction planning. But at the current rate of development, the interstate network would not reach even a reasonable level of extent and efficiency in half a century. State highway departments cannot effectively meet the need. Adequate right-of-way to assure control of access, grade separation structures, relocation and realinement of present highways—all these, done on the necessary scale within an integrated system, exceed their collective capacity. ”

“ In addition to these systems, the Federal Government has the principal, and in many cases the sole, responsibility for roads that cross or provide access to federally owned land-more than one-fifth the Nation’s area. ”