Bureau of Public Roads

“ The construction and study of experimental roads has been started and will he actively prosecuted, mainly by the Bureau of Public Roads, in cooperation with several of the state highway departments, but always with the active assistance and advice of representatives of the asphalt industry. ”

“ The Bureau of Public Roads sought the cooperation of the 48 States, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, and the basic estimates of needs and costs presented in this report represent the data furnished by them.
It is recognized that some tendency to understate needs still exists. Lack of full supporting evidence of need may cause the paring down of estimates to the point where they cannot be questioned; this is probably true in greater degree in the estimates for urban areas. ”

“ Under the general direction of this committee the Bureau of Public Roads continued its investigations that led to the recommendations of the 1939 report and prepared the report Interregional Highways [1] which the President transmitted to the Congress on January 12, 1944. ”

“ When the first Federal-aid road act became a law on July 11, 1916, a number of States had no highway department, and as late as 1920 there were some States that had highway departments in name only, all highway work actually being in the hands of county and other local officials. ”

“ The director of public works and the division of roads and bridges shall have full power and authority to lay out, establish, acquire, open, construct, improve, maintain, discontinue, and regulate the use of freeways within this state in the same manner or manners in which said director and said division, respectively, may now lay out, establish, acquire, open, construct, improve, maintain, discontinue, and regulate the use of highways within the state. ”

“ Like the national parks, the national forests expanded rapidly and today constitute a major resource of this Nation.
The development of both the national parks system and the national forests occurred during the same period as the development of the Nation’s highway system. Because the Federal Highway Administration is the “roadbuilder” for the Federal Government, it has been directly engaged in the location, design, and construction of public roads to and through the national parks and forests and other Federal domain areas since 1905. ”

“ Such agency should have authority, under proper restrictions, to make such lands available to State and local highway and street authorities for rights-of-way and for development for recreational, tourist, and the other facilities for the accommodation of traffic, all on a basis which would render such agency either partly or wholly self-liquidating over a period of years. ”

“ The cordial and effective cooperation of the staffs of HHFA and the Public Roads Administration and the direction of much of the 701 money to the cooperative (sometimes called hyphenated) land use-transportation planning process must rank well up with the highway contribution in the success of the process.
While highway departments were placing major emphasis on planning arterial routes in urban areas, city street congestion was steadily worsening. ”

“ The system approved by the Commissioner of Public Roads in June 1946 totaled 217,073 miles, but this was just a beginning, as tens of thousands of miles of additional routes were then still under review. According to the PRA, “No route is approved without first assessing its importance by reference to the records made in the planning surveys showing locations of farms, schools, churches, and business establishments, type of existing road improvement, general population distribution, and the amount of traffic.” ”

“ The right-of-way problem could be greatly simplified and in a large measure eliminated with respect to major highways and streets ifthere were some central agency with sufficient funds and authority of law to acquire the lands necessary for the improvement of such highways and streets at a period substantially in advance of the time when the improvements actually would be made. ”

“ Considering the needs in respect to highway and street improvements described in detail in this report, it is believed that the Federal Government can most helpfully contribute to the important improvements required in the following ways:
1. By facilitating the acquisition of adequate rights-of-way. To a great degree the early obsolescence of the rural highways previously built is due to the restrictions imposed upon their design by inadequate rights-of-way. In cities, archaic street plans are in need of major revision to permit the free flow of modern traffic. ”

“ But, while the improvement of heavy traffic arteries is thus indicated to be a first necessity, and of greatest value to the largest proportion of highway usage, the State highway planning surveys are also establishing other facts that merit careful consideration. These facts show that it is probable that the Federal-aid and State highways in the average State give direct access to about one-fourth of the total number of rural homes, and places of business, social and religious gatherings. ”

“ From its beginning in 1893 as the ORI, the Office of Public Road Inquiries had been a temporary organization set up by the Secretary of Agriculture to perform a job mandated by Congress, namely, to collect and disseminate information about good roads. ”

“ Obsolescence Overtakes the Highways
After 1921 the States concentrated their efforts on improving the 7 percent Federal-aid system into a travelable national network. As traffic became heavier in volume and faster, the States improved the highways to keep pace. They widened pavements first to 18 feet as required by the Federal Highway Act of 1921 and then to 20 feet. Some States banked the curves of old roads to make them safer and flattened the cut slopes for greater visibility. The highway departments of the public land States smoothed thousands of right angle turns with flatter curves. ”

“ In approving Federal-aid highway projects to be carried out with any unobligated funds apportioned to any State, the Commissioner of Public Roads may give priority of approval to, and expedite the construction of, projects that are recommended by the appropriate Federal defense agency as important to the national defense. ”

“ By a general Highway Act, a new principle of road-government had been brought in, under which the trustees of turnpike roads might raise money through tolls, sufficient to pay the interest of the debts and keep the highways in repair. ”

“ When construction is completed, it shall immediately remove all the obstacles from the road and eliminate the hidden troubles endangering safety, and only after the road is checked and accepted as up to traffic requirements by the department in charge of roads and the traffic control department of the public security organ, the road may be open to traffic anew. ”

“ There were conspicuous cases of public spirited work, by men of wide vision, who under careful management were promoting worthily the construction of connected roads, and doing much to improve highway transport conditions in the country, but these organizations working independently and having no co-ordinating agency could not be expected to develop a unified and correlated system of routes. Such organizations still have an important work to do in moulding and guiding an enlightened public opinion with respect to local road matters in the communities where they are interested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Office of Public Roads inquiry beginning, as has been shown, very simply, has by devoted service and extreme economy been able to do a remarkable amount of good for the public highways of this country. ”

“ Presuming that highways throughout the Nation should be built to standards uniformly adequate in all States, the variety of size and weight laws persisting, highway authorities of many States are unavoidably confronted with the necessity of justifying any decisions they may reach as to road standards that appear inconsistent with the existing State law. ”

“ In the construction of the above referred to radial and circumferential routes, it is important that they incorporate the controlled or limited-access characteristics or have wide rights-of-way which would make possible the exercise of priority in their use and in event of bombing would reduce to a minimum the rubble that would fall on at least a portion of the traveled way.
(6) Correcting the various major deficiencies in critical urban areas should be a matter of continued coordination between the Public Roads Administration and the National Military Establishment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The powers and duties of agencies dealing with highways in the national parks or in military or naval reservations under the control of the United States Army or Navy, or with highways used principally for military or naval purposes, shall not be taken over by the Secretary of Agriculture, but such highways shall remain under the control and jurisdiction of such agencies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the construction of future belt lines and bypasses control of lateral access and separation from the grade of cross highways at intersections always should be provided. Only by so doing can the bypasses be preserved for their proper function of serving through traffic. So protected, the cities can expand beyond the circuit routes provided without interfering with the discharge of the duty of such routes. ”

“ He had been head of the Bureau from 1919 to 1953, and during these years of his leadership, this Nation expanded its roadways from a scant 1⁄4 of a million miles, of which very little was hard surfaced, to 31⁄2 million miles of hard-surfaced, efficient, interstate roads; the Federal-State partnership in roadbuilding was developed and refined; the Alaska Highway was built and the Pan American Highway was well underway; and many of his staff worked with other countries in developing their roads and further training their engineers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is that in the business district itself—in most cities, but particularly the older ones—there is a slow decay that will not be arrested until there is radical revision of the city plan. Such a revision will have to provide the greater space now needed for the unfettered circulation of traffic, and will have to permit a reintegration of facilities for the various forms of transportation—railway terminals, docks, airports and the highway approaches to each—more consistent with their modern relationships. ”

“ More serious than its effects upon highway design policy, however, is the effect of this variety of State vehicle regulatory laws upon the flow of interstate traffic. When different dimensions and weights are fixed as the largest permissible in each of two States, vehicles that can legally be operated in one can be operated in the other only in violation of law. ”

“ After 1974 additional lanes will be built as traffic needs warrant.
Other Federal-aid primary
1955–64.—The concept of development for the Federal-aid primary system (exclusive of the interstate system) for the first 10 years is to provide improvements so that the system will, by the end of 1964, be adequate for traffic of that year. y road section improved during this period shall have a generally high-type surface, a sufficient number of lanes to take care of traffic for 10 years, and adequacy in other geometric respects for 30 years from the date of its construction. ”