National Interregional Highway Committee

“ The courts have recognized that abutting property owners have certain rights in existing streets and highways. These rights include the right of ingress to and egress from their property, and in some cases the right of visibility as well as the right to the flow of light and air from the street to the property. Moreover, it is well established in the common law that the right of access cannot be denied or restricted nor can an owner be deprived of such right except upon the payment of just compensation and in a manner not inconsistent with due process of law, and for a public use or purpose. ”

“ At no greater expense one location will provide frequent opportunities for distant vistas of natural charm that are unobtainable in an alternate location. For such enduring investments as the interregional routes there should be no sparing of whatever thought and care may be necessary to place these roads in locations of utmost fitness from every point of view, and this includes the fullest practicable development of scenic possibilities, consistent with the primary requirements of traffic service. ”

“ It was mainly the desire of new-fledged motorists in the cities for a comfortable ride into the country beyond the reaches of their paved streets, the similar deferred hope of more humble cyclists, and the competing aims of merchants in each town and city to enlarge or at least to hold, each his own rural trade, that prodded a long-talking “good roads movement” into actual construction. ”

“ Twenty-five years ago there was virtually{no control of growth and city development through city planning. Today many cities have plan commissions and a city plan in some stage of development.
Urban planning is really just now coming to grips with one of the basic urban problems—decentralization or dissipation of the urban area to an extent not economically justified, This is a most difficult problem to solve. So long, however, as the central areas of the cities are poor places in which to live and rear children, people will continue to move to the outskirts. ”

“ The principle of providing for the advance planning and regulated construction of needed public works for the stabilization of industry and the alleviation of unemployment is well established. A complete readiness of desirable projects and a recognition of the propitious time for their launching are essential prerequisites to a fully effective injection of the stimulant of public works in a period when private activity is waning or in transition from war to peacetime production. ”

“ To connect all communities classified as urban would require inclusion in the system of a large part of the Nation’s 3,000,000-mile rural road system. Such a system would serve a very large part of the total highway traffic, but its average intensity of usage would be low by reason of the inclusion of much lightly traveled mileage. Obviously, it would be a much more extensive system than any that could properly be described as a major interregional system. ”

“ What the city will be like in the future depends on whether its future development is planned or haphazard. Several new conditions, however, will greatly affect city development. One of the most important of these is that future population growth of cities will be limited. To base the planning of highways or anything else on expectations of urban population increases like those of the past, would seem to be unwise. ”

“ In the first place, it may usually be assumed that substantially all of the traffic approaching the business section of a city is destined to that area, and will be discharged at its fringe, there to enter the central street system or a parking garage. In the second place, city-penetrating express routes, where they extend continuously across a city, can generally be located tangentially to the central business area. If and when it is necessary to extend an express route through a central business area, elevated or tunneled locations will usually be the more appropriate choices. ”

“ While there is a dearth of judicial opinion on the question of the abutter’s right of access to newly created highway facilities, unless there is a reversal of judicial doctrine in many States the owner of abutting property is likely to possess the same right of access to new roads as he has with respect to old, established highways. The theory seems to be that the proprietary right of access of the abutter accrues as a matter of law the moment the new facility is opened to traffic. ”

“ Moreover, the normally substantial part of total construction activity that is made up of the private construction of industrial, commercial, social, recreational and public utility facilities is a barometer that indicates by its rise and fall the state of the economic weather, present and to come. Made up of uncoordinated aggregations of individual enterprise and highly responsive to change in the cost of funds used for its financing, private construction activity by its increase is indicative of an expanding economy ”

“ The Public Roads Administration’s studies of the traffic-discharge capacity of highways have reached the conclusion that a one-way, two-lane roadway with no intersections will discharge without unreasonable congestion an hourly traffic of 3,000 vehicles moving at an average speed of 35 miles per hour. With equal congestion but with three traffic lights per mile, each set on a half-minute interval, the hourly discharge is reduced to at best 1,500 vehicles an hour. One or two more traffic lanes would have to be provided to restore the highway to its intersection-free capacity. ”

“ Thus, as the evidence on the preceding pages shows, cities are of very great importance in the movement of most interregional and long-range traffic. It was on this fact as well as on its general knowledge that the most concentrated masses of population and industry are located in the cities, that the Committee determined to base its selection of routes primarily upon the principle of the interconnection of important cities. ”

“ Too often in the past the character of road improvements undertaken has been governed by the limitations of shortsighted land-acquisition measures. When the acquirement of land is postponed, as usually it has been, until the very moment of need for construction purposes, it is often discovered that the land actually wanted cannot be obtained without long delay. Time pressing, plans are altered to require less or more-available land, and in the end it is often found that for such inadequate takings too much has been paid. Every condition leads to ill-advised and uneconomic compromise. ”

“ The effort to crowd an elevated highway into the narrow space generally afforded by existing surface streets will usually result in unsatisfactory design of the express route and impairment of the utility of the surface street for local service. Generally, it will also cause serious damage to abutting property. To avoid these undesirable consequences it will usually be necessary to acquire a right-of-way wider than can be found within the limits of an existing street. ”

“ Recognizing the difficulty of unifying a multiplicity of local agencies, the Committee believes that the creation of an over-all authority would be highly beneficial and desirable in complex urban areas. A metropolitan authority would avoid obvious mistakes in the location of the interregional routes and thus prevent distortions in the development of the area. Only through some over-all agency such as a metropolitan authority can there be developed an adequate thoroughfare plan to provide for all traffic needs. ”

“ There are existing roads that conform closely to all parts of the recommended system. There will be existing roads conforming more or less closely to any system that may be selected as a better modification of the system recommended. After any such system is finally agreed upon, whenever the improvement or reconstruction of any section of conforming highway is contemplated, it should be built on a location and to a standard of design that will make it a fit and lasting part of the complete interregional system that will be created by such sectional increments. ”

“ As in the location and construction of the routes, design for utility and economy is found to go hand in hand with sound landscape design, so also a properly landscaped highway will be a highway easy to maintain. The flattened side slopes will favor the growth of vegetation, prevent erosion and thus remove the cause of much troublesome clogging of the drainage system. The easier slopes can be mowed by machine instead of by hand methods, and the streamlined contours of cut banks will reduce snow drifting and facilitate machine methods of snow removal. ”

“ At all grade intersections on rural sections of the interregional system, vehicles approaching on the intersecting highways shall be required, before crossing the interregional highway, to come to a complete stop at a point off the through-traffic lanes of the interregional highway. From such point of stopping, the sight distance in each direction along the interregional highway and from the rear along the intersecting highway, shall be not less than the safe stopping distance corresponding to the probable speed of traffic on each high- way, as hereinbefore recommended. ”

“ The Gowanus Elevated Parkway in New York, typical of elevated construction that may be employed near the centers of larger cities, cost $3,000,000 per mile. A large part of the cost was made up of the right-of-way expense engendered by widening of the street in which it was built. Even though attractively designed, elevated roadways are aesthetically undesirable in the midst of some parts of cities, such as residential areas. They also tend to divide a community and to act as barriers, at least psychologically, between the divided sections. ”

“ Land for marginal protection and future road widening.—On rural sections of the system, expecially those sections which will be constructed initially as two-lane highways, the width of right-of-way acquired should be sufficient to provide for any surface widening that may be reasonably anticipated. Nothing is more completely demonstrated by past experience than the costliness of successive acquisitions of property frontage to make room for repeated unanticipated road widenings. ”

“ In 10 of the existing limited-access highway laws the State alone is given authority to establish such facilities. Since the necessity for limitation of access arises mainly in connection with the service of extraordinary volumes of traffic in and near urban centers, it is highly desirable that the power to create and participate in the creation of limited-access facilities be extended to city and county highway authorities, as provided by the recommended model bill. ”

“ The character of the interregional routes as main collectors of through traffic justifies the granting of preferential right-of-way to traffic moving on them over all crossing and entering traffic everywhere, throughout the system. A proper facilitation of the express traffic with due regard for safety and economy requires, moreover, a reduction of the number of access and crossing points to a practicable minimum. ”

“ But the common impression that provision of such routes would constitute invariably a complete, or even a substantially adequate, solution of the highway problem at cities is not well-founded. It is a fallacious conception of the need for adequate accommodation of the traffic moving over the rural highways. From the standpoint of the cities it fails as a solution of the most serious aspects of the problem. ”

“ Among the more lightly traveled of existing highways approximating the location of sections of the system, substantial conformity to the less exacting standards Proposed for such sections of the system is more common. But of these more lightly traveled highways, even, a large mileage cannot be regarded as an acceptable addition to the system without major improvement—improvement which again involves the provision of features of free traffic flow to a greater extent than the provision of adequate road surfaces. ”

“ Granting that the doctrine of accessibility is logical in the case of existing highways, it seems unreasonable with respect to new through-traffic facilities. Yet, the concept of limited-access highways to facilitate the efficient movement of through traffic is of such recent emergence that the judiciary has not had the opportunity to endorse or reject it on its merits. ”

“ Judged by the standards proposed, however, existing facilities provided by city streets are so far from adequate that there is little need for detailed analvsis.
Like the rural roads, existing city streets approach nearest to adequacy in the design of their pavements, but a widespread neglect of maintenance has permitted much deterioration of what would otherwise remain as structurally adequate surfaces. In relation to their traffic volumes, many of the city streets have an over-all width less than that provided on some of the rural roads ”

“ But instances are rare indeed in which the congestion of through highways in cities has been attacked at its principal root—the frequent grade intersection of cross streets. Instead of eliminating this principal cause of traffic delay, city authorities have generally resorted to the installation of traffic lights for control of the intersecting traffic streams and the prevention of accidents, and this expedient measure has in some cases been so applied as to increase rather than reduce the obstruction of traffic. ”

“ The cities and metropolitan areas of the country are known to include the sources and destinations of much the greater part of the heavy flow of traffic that moves over the Nation’s highways. The system of interregional highways proposed, within the limit of the mileage adopted, connects as many as possible of the larger cities and metropolitan areas regionally and interregionally. For this reason, although in miles it represents scarcely over 1 percent of the entire highway and street system, it will probably serve not less than 20 percent of the total street and highway traffic. ”