United States Public Roads Administration

“ While there is no question that public authorities may close access from abutting land to a street or highway with the consent of the owner and upon payment of compensation or damages, there is, even in the face of specific statutory authority, some question as to the power of public agencies to deny the right of access without such consent. ”

“ Far-sighted improvements of both rural highways and city streets are everywhere blocked by the inability of the States and local governments unaided, to provide the rights-of-way required; and there is danger that expedient measures forced by the irresistible pressure of traffic, will result in heavy new investment destined for early obsolescence. ”

“ One of the elements of highway design most affected by the volume of traffic to be served is the width of the pavement or the number of lanes provided.
In determining the number of traffic lanes required for toll roads, it is necessary to base the determination upon factors that are not present in the same degree in dealing with free public highways. Highway departments have built the existing roads with definitely limited funds and it has been their problem to distribute these funds over the roads under their control so as to meet the most urgent traffic requirements. ”

“ A so-called bypass route or belt line that is left open to access from the side at all points becomes in a very short time just another city street.The business-generating potentiality of a heavy traffic stream is so great that there is an immediate development of a great variety of roadside establishments all along every new heavily traveled route that is created. Every new highway also, especially in the vicinity of cities, immediately encourages residential development and attracts commercial establishments more interested in the new facility provided by it than in catering to its traffic. ”

“ When one observes the countless impediments that embarrass the movement of twentieth-century traffic through the eighteenth century streets of some eastern cities one wonders how long it will be, with the assured further increase in traffic, before complete congestion will result. ”

“ The city urges that, when the improvement is completed, the city council will doubtless be in a position to determine what sized tracts and what kinds of restriction will be best suited for the harmonious development of the south side of Fifth Street. But the city also insists that it may never resell the excess; that it is not compelled to so by the constitution; that the question is one to be determined in the future; that recoupment can come only from a sale, and that until by some act the city evidences an intent to sell it cannot be said to be proceeding only on a theory of recoupment. ”

“ In fact, while the courts have uniformly held that the question of what constitutes a public use is a judicial and not a legislative one, they nevertheless have sustained the taking of wider widths of rights-of-way than were required for the actual physical location of the traffic facility, and it is only reasonable to assume that they will be more and more responsive to the growth of traffic volume and the obvious necessity for expansion of the highway facilities to accommodate that traffic. ”

“ Persons of low income who own and operate passenger automobiles are influenced in the uses they make of their cars to a greater extent by the immediate operating expense, such as gasoline and oil, than by the actual total costs, including tires, depreciation, and so forth. The cost of the gasoline consumed on a trip may amount to little more than a cent a mile. To the motorcar owner with an income of less than $1,500 a year, a toll of 1 cent per mile is likely to appear as a 100-percent increase in his cost of operation ”

“ From the point of view of driver behavior, the three-lane highway suffers a psychological disadvantage which might well result in an abnormally high accident rate. On a two-lane road, a driver engaged in a passing Maneuver must encroach upon the left lane, the lane which is definitely reserved for traffic in the opposite direction, and he does it with full realization that his passing is accomplished only in the face of the superior rights of drivers in the opposing lane. ”

“ The prospective user of a toll highway will regard lack of adequate width in an entirely different light. He will be in a position to choose between the free and the toll route. To attract the motorist the toll roads must offer advantages that loom larger than the tolls charged. There must he no retarding of traffic flow because of lack of width. Therefore the traffic volume at which a toll facility should be widened is inevitably much lower than that at which free highways have been widened. ”

“ With gasoline at 18 cents per gallon the cost per mile would increase from 1.03 to 1.47 cents per mile, representing a cost for the higher speed of over 0.4 cent per mile for gasoline alone. Should the availability of a large mileage of high-speed highway induce the more general usage of over-drive transmissions, or the introduction of engines performing more efficiently in the higher speed ranges, the final cost of fast driving on toll highways might be no higher than present costs of traveling at similar speeds, desired but seldom possible, on existing highways. ”

“ Massachusetts provides that more land may be taken by the commonwealth, county, or city than is needed for the actual construction, provided that no more land is to be taken than is needed for suitable building lots on both sides of the street.
New York authorizes cities and counties to take more land than is needed for actual construction provided that no more land shall be taken than is needed to form suitable building sites. ”

“ Figures show that the same freedom of movement possible on a two-lane road with a total hourly volume of 400 vehicles will be found on a four-lane divided highway with an hourly volume of 2,600 vehicles, or 1,300 vehicles in each direction. Using the ratio between the maximum hourly volume and the average daily volume throughout the year found on two-lane roads, 1,300 vehicles per hour represent a daily average of 5,000 vehicles in each direction. Typical heavily traveled roads show that in periods of heavy volume, the volume in one direction is seldom more than double that in the other. ”

“ A road hitherto lightly traveled is about to be improved. It occupies an ancient right-of-way of a width consistent with its use many years ago. The legislature, as the appropriating body, has made available for the improvement of that particular road and many others certain public funds from which must be met not only the costs of constructing the roads but also whatever costs there may be for the acquisition of the lands on which such roads may be built. ”

“ If further, we consider the case of the smallest urban communities—the highway or ribbon towns that at intervals stretch out along main highways and vary from a block or two to several blocks in width—the bypassing of such places is not only helpful to the preponderant through traffic, but is usually necessary for the avoidance of congestion and serious accidents and the protection of life on the main street of the little community. ”

“ One of the handicaps under which roadbuilders have labored during the period of development of the motor vehicle is that they must expect the roads they build to outlast the vehicles that exist at the time of their building. There is a substantial mileage of road pavement still in use that was built 25 years ago or longer, serving today kinds of vehicles that were undreamed of when they were built. ”

“ In theory, a three-lane road has a definite place where the traffic in one direction is much heavier than that in the other direction and where the direction of heavy traffic flow reverses as, for example, between morning and evening. In the case of toll highways, however, it is not anticipated that there will be any such marked difference in the volume of traffic in the two directions and therefore this theoretical advantage of the three-lane highway is not present. ”

“ That, to a certain extent, the selection of roads for improvement may be the means, over a long period, of fostering a desirable movement from less to more favorable lands is also seen as a possibility. Governed in this way, the improvement of secondary and feeder roads, by widening the margin of advantage between the less and the more favorable lands, may become a useful instrument for inducing an economically and socially beneficial resettlement of the rural population by a gradual and natural process. ”

“ All are positive menaces and must be controlled, and only the prob ability of material improvement lies in a general and substantial widening of the rights-of-way of the more important roads, together with effective border control. On such roads the availability of wider publicly controlled margins will permit employment of various measures designed to abate the menace; among them roadside planting to obscure unwanted billboards, the prevention of parking on the traveled way, and control of the conditions of egress from and ingress to the highway at all bordering properties. ”

“ In all work under the Federal Highway Act the responsibility to provide the right-of-way and to satisfy damage claims is placed solely upon the States. The Government has assumed a part of the right-of-way expense in other recent public works of various classes in which it has participated, but it generally has refrained from lending any assistance to the States and local governments in overcoming the difficult legal and procedural obstacles encountered. ”

“ When further widening is thus forced the needed additional land has risen in value. There are more owners or occupants to deal with and many of the new ones occupy the very margins of the road where they conduct various sorts of traffic-serving business. To some of the owners the additional widening, required mainly for the accommodation of an increased volume of passing traffic, is of little interest and in their view will confer no new or greatly desired benefits. To others, the widening proposed means the destruction of their property. ”

“ Although there are these contitutional provisions in eight States, and statutory provisions in seven others (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon, and Virginia) , the right to acquire marginal land in connection with highway development is still very limited. The right to resell a surplus of land taken is still more circumscribed; and the right to condemn private property solely for the purpose of recouping the cost of a public-works improvement is left open to question on the point of constitutionality by decision of the highest court. ”

“ In the larger cities generally only a major operation will suffice—nothing less than the creation of a depressed or an elevated artery (the former usually to be preferred) that will convey the massed movement pressing into, and through, the heart of the city, under or over the local cross streets without interruption by their conflicting traffic. Such facilities are not required in any city for the service of through highway traffic alone. They are not required solely for the service of the traffic entering the city from typically rural highways. ”

“ Provision of facilities has always lagged behind the evident needs. Often a needed widening of surface has been deferred in order to meet more pressing demands for surfacing earth roads or to replace low-type surfaces with more durable construction. Any system of highways constructed with public funds for the free use of the public must be designed on the basis of compromise, and all highway users have been inconvenienced at times by the lack of both wide and smooth surfaces. ”

“ It appears to be a principle upon which the courts generally agree that if the right of access to a street or highway from abutting land is wholly denied the result may be equivalent to a taking of the property itself and may entitle the owner to compensation accordingly. ”

“ With a zero traffic volume there are no vehicles and consequently there can be no value for vehicle speed, but vehicle speed at zero traffic is approximated when a vehicle moves by itself, so separated from other traffic that the driver is not influenced by the presence of other vehicles on the road. ”

“ In consequence there is often on such relatively short sections of highway an actual development of congestion or an approach to it.
If we inquire into the reason for the failure to augment the traffic facility in proportion to the increase in traffic we usually encounter right-of-way difficulties. At the approach to the city road-bordering developments thicken to such an extent that the additional space required for the widening or other increase of the highway facility may be obtainable only at heavy cost because of the closely crowding suburban residences and industrial establishments. ”

“ Within the business district itself there are many properties which probably are not included among those taken by the city for nonpayment of taxes only because the improvements that once occupied the land have been razed and the land converted into parking lots, most of which are of an order of unsightliness that is an affront to the pride of the city. ”

“ A consideration of the ability of people to pay tolls, as indicated by the distribution of automobile owners by income groups, and further consideration of actual fees which would be charged for specific trips over various sections of the routes, led to the conclusion that not more than about one-third of the vehicles that might use a typical free road of limited access could be regarded as potential traffic for the same road operated as a toll facility. ”