Interstate Highway System

“ Our vast network of highways, which account for 90 percent of travel and 80 percent by value of freight traffic goods movement, is deteriorating. If current trends continue, a major proportion of the Interstate pavement will have deteriorated by the end of the 1980's.
Arresting the deterioration of the nation's system of highways is a high priority objective for the 1980's. We must reorient the Federal mission from major new construction projects to the stewardship of the existing Interstate Highway System. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should be added here, that while on rural sections of the system no great need is found for further separation of highway grade intersections, there is widespread need for the improvement of intersections by other means, such as the lengthening of sight distance, the construction of deceleration and acceleration lanes on the interstate highway, and the construction of channelizing islands to regularize intersecting traffic movements. ”

“ System may yet be altered in urban areas as the 1973 Highway Act is implemented and as Congress gives further consideration to the total transportation needs in the large urban areas. However, these adjustments can and will be made without impairment of the total value of the Interstate System to this Nation’s economic growth and social well being. ”

“ For the interstate highway system the thirtieth highest hour of the year has been selected as the criterion for decision upon the adequacy of existing facilities and for determinations of geometric features of the highways, such as the number of traffic lanes, maximum gradients, and curvatures, that are required to accommodate traffic using this system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again, such a program would not only benefit the motor vehicle user but constitute a desirable public works program to provide employment. It can be said that this map is the lineal ancestor of the Interstate System, truly a document of first importance in highway history.
Returning from the White House, Chief MacDonald handed the map to Mr. Fairbank and asked him to get on with the study. Thus, began the first assembly of detailed information on traffic flow on a national basis, possible only because of the rapid progress by the States on the highway planning surveys. ”

“ Notable exceptions are seen in the Interstate System, which surely is a system planned by highway planners for highway transportation, and in the great undeveloped State of Alaska where new routes are being laid out to permit development of its natural resources. So compared to the many underdeveloped countries, the United States has in effect been doing not highway planning, but highway improvement planning. ”

“ Practically all of the States agreed that the most troublesome congestion was on the selected Interstate System routes. These had long been the most important traffic arteries and were now the oldest and most obsolete. Most of the highway departments made a determined effort to upgrade these old roads, and through fiscal year 1948 they channeled about 22 percent of their postwar primary and urban Federal aid and matching money, amounting to $384 million, into interstate projects. ”

“ The off-tracking of the larger vehicles that are likely to use the interstate highway system is not sufficient to require lane widths in excess of 12 feet on any curve up to 9 degrees, which is the absolute maximum permitted in the design standards for the system. ”

“ The Interstate System accounts for just over one percent of the total road mileage in the United States, yet it carries approximately 20 percent of the Nation's total traffic volume. Employing the most advanced highway safety designs ever devised, the Interstate System is one of the Nation's safest modes of transportation. ”

“ Each state must select a connected road system not exceeding 7 per cent of its road mileage for improvement with Federal Aid. This system will be divided into two classes, one to be known as “interstate highways” the other as “intercounty highways.” The interstate highways must not exceed three-sevenths of the system selected; on them not more than 60 per cent of the Federal Aid Allotment can be spent without the joint approval of the Secretary of Agriculture and the State Highway Department. The intercounty highways will receive the remainder of the allotment. ”

“ One study was reported in March 1955 in the document Needs of the Highway Systems, 1955–84. Construction needs of the 37,700-mile Interstate System for the years 1955–64, to provide for traffic predicted for 1974, were estimated to cost $23.2 billion, of which 46 percent would be spent in urban areas. Again, the estimate did not cover the 2,300 miles of urban auxiliary routes. Thus, the estimate included essentially the same mileage as the estimate reported in 1949, and at about the same construction unit price levels. ”

“ In a requirement for earlier action, another section of the 1973 Act called for the designation of “Priority Primary Routes.“ These routes were to be high traffic sections to supplement the Interstate System by ”. . . furnishing needed adequate traffic collector and distributor facilities . . .“ These routes were to be selected by the State highway departments in “consultation” (not cooperation) with appropriate local officials. The States were to make an initial selection of such routes and estimate and report to Congress by July 1974 their cost. ”

“ The Congress first recognized the need to give citizens the opportunity to comment on proposed highway projects in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, but for diametrically the opposite reason for what is now fundamental to project acceptance. At that time citizens and travel-oriented businesses in small towns feared the loss of business if the Interstate System, with its required control of access and widely spaced interchanges, were to bypass their communities. ”

“ Improvement of the principal secondary roads, long deferred, remains a present need whatever may be the provision for the primary roads, and these improvements also will contribute to a state of highway readiness for the national defense. The need for these other improvements is inferior only to needs on the interstate system. ”

“ The advent of the Interstate System opened other new areas, and the 1956 Interstate standards were prepared based on the Committee’s earlier work. These policies on highway design matters have been widely accepted by engineers in governmental and private practice. ”

“ Today we smoothly cross these same mountain barriers on Interstate highways which are a tribute to 50 years of highway engineering progress pioneered by those engineers who made the first highway locations and carried through the design and construction of the first improved highways across the mountain barriers, tying all parts of our country together with a modern highway transportation system. ”

“ It is apparent that the rural interstate system, in its present state of improvement, is about as safe as, but certainly no safer than, the average of all rural roads, and since its traffic is far above the average in volume, it accounts for an exceptionally large proportion of the annual highway death toll. ”

“ During this decade, highway investments will be needed to increase productivity, particularly in the elimination of bottlenecks, provide more efficient connections to ports and seek low-cost solutions to traffic demand.
My Administration has therefore recommended redefining completion of the Interstate system, consolidating over 27 categorical assistance programs into nine, and initiating a major repair and rehabilitation program for segments of the Interstate system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For this added cost, the interstate system roads will have longer service lives and will be capable of carrying twice as much traffic as other roads not incorporating these features, and will carry it more efficiently.
Looming in importance both on a cost basis and a percentage basis is the magnitude of the right-of-way problem in urban areas. The total urban right-of-way costs for the 10-year period are estimated at $8.2 billion, 23 percent of all urban costs and 8 percent of the entire $101 billion estimate. ”

“ Passing sight distance is undesirably restricted on 7,324 miles of the interstate system. The free flow of traffic on the system at present is interfered with at numerous points, especially in urban areas, by stop signs, stop- and-go lights, and flashing beacons. ”

“ Highways built to accommodate a high percentage of drivers traveling on long trips should, therefore, be designed for higher speeds than highways on which trips are predominantly short, and (2) there is no justification for a design of high-ways to accommodate speeds in excess of 70 miles per hour under any condition. For about two decades 70 miles per hour has been the advocated upper design speed for the Interstate System and other main highways. ”

“ Moved that it be the sense of this Body that no discussion along the line of numbers to be adopted for these routes be had until the system of arterial highways for the United States is selected. CARRIED.
RESOLUTION No. 5
REGARDING TRAIL MARKING
WHEREAS, this Association has adopted the report of the Subcommittee on Traffic Control and Safety, recommending the immediate selection of transcontinental and interstate routes from the Federal-aid road system, said roads to be continuously designated "by means of standard highway marking signs and protected by standard traffic warning signs ”