National Road

“ It would be an impossible task to collect the names of all the old wagoners of the National Road. They number thousands, and many of them left the road long since to seek fortunes in new and distant sections of our widely extended country. ”

“ The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. ”

“ Any one familiar with the National Road in its prosperous era, whose business or other engagements required a divergence from it, invariably returned to it with a sense of security and a feeling of rest and relief. ”

“ The making of a few great arteries, coupled with the making of proper exits from the great towns and of by-ways round the urban centres, is a national concern. You cannot, in the present state of society, regard it as local, nor even as chiefly concerning the direct users of the Road, for even these, who are apparently [202] the people upon whom the burden should most justly fall, develop by their travel the district through which they pass. ”

“ Where traffic on the rural routes is heavy and, in the environs of cities, where it is desirable to discourage undue extension of road-bordering city growth, prohibition of access to the highway from abutting land, controlled access at specified points, and the closure or grade separation of all intersecting highways are essential. ”

“ In some instances traffic of the longer range is now divided between an existing road conforming most closely to the recommended interregional route and another parallel road of substantially equal directness and degree of improvement. ”

“ The 1 percent of the country’s total rural-road mileage, which forms the rural portion of the designated interstate system, served in the several States an average of 2714 percent of the travel on all rural roads in each State by vehicles registered in other States. The designated rural system is thus shown to be outstandingly of service to that portion of the country’s highway traffic that can be classed as interstate in character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On such sections an ample right-of-way, variously and appropriately treated, can do much to relieve the monotony of driving over long, smooth stretches of straight highway, and will contribute largely to the safety as well as the pleasure of travel. Under these conditions the value of land is likely to be relatively low and the need of a reserve of space for future road widening will supplement the requirements of appropriate landscape treatment in support of the economy of a present liberal acquisition of right-of-way. ”

“ From the standpoint of the national-defense effort, the objective in access road construction is to provide adequate highway connections for the reservations and industrial areas with nearby main highways and railroads or other transportation services, and from neighboring towns and cities. From the standpoint of highway traffic, the developments planned at nearly all of the reservations and new industrial sites will be equivalent in their generation of highway traffic to the creation of a considerable number of new cities of very substantial size. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In addition, public control shall be obtained, either by purchase or outright condemnation or by the acquirement of highway development rights, over a strip of land of sufficient width to prevent the erection of any private structure or sign within a distance of not less than 100 feet from the outer edge of the road surface or pavement as it is likely to be constructed or converted within-a period of 20 years. ”

“ In the early history of the Republic the National Government itself laid out and partially completed a great national system of highways connecting the East with the West, and the capital of the nation with its then most distant possessions. ”

“ All structures of a length between abutments of 20 feet or less, measured along the center line of the road, shall be defined as culverts.
Alinement of bridges.—All bridges, wherever feasible, shall be so located as to fit the over-all alinement and gradient of the highway and shall be subordinated thereto. Where structural or architectural requirements make it desirable to adjust the alinement and gradient of the highway, the changes shall be such that the highway will meet all the basic standards for rural sections of the system, recommended herein under “I. Roads.” ”

“ In 1920 the Bureau of Public Roads reported:
Due to the fact that the forest areas lie along the mountain summits, they contain the passes through which the important trunk highways must cross the mountain ranges, and as a consequence many forest road projects are links in important State and national highways. ”

“ Foundations and bases.—All road foundations and bases on rural sections of the system shall be capable of supporting the recommended maximum loads of vehicles as such loads are transmitted by surfaces or pavements of adequate design, without reduction of load or speed at any season of the year. ”

“ Commercial and passenger vehicles and an Army convoy mutually impede each other on this winding mountain highway, U S Route 2in Vermont. The road is inadequate in almost every detail—width, shoulders, curvature, grade, and sight distance. The broken culvert guardrail in the foreground is evidence of the inadequate width.
4. For the making of engineering surveys and plans for development of the strategic network, including extensions into and municipalities, $12,000,000 to be apportioned among the States and matched by them on the existing Federal-aid basis. ”

“ All rural sections of the system expected to carry an average daily traffic of 3,000 but less than 15,000 vehicles shall provide at least two lanes for traffic moving in each direction, each lane to have a width of 12 feet; and the lanes for traffic moving in opposite directions shall be separated by a median strip at least 15 feet wide. On sections which permit crossing or entering at grade at intersecting highways or private entrances, the median strip at public road crossings shall be at least 40 feet wide, and opposite private-property entrances, at least 25 feet wide. ”

“ The general system of the present-day national roads follows largely the old Roman means of communication, as well as those traced by nature, along the banks of rivers and on the flanks of mountains and in the valleys lying between. The great national roads of France form a class by themselves, independent of the departmental and communal roads. They approximate forty thousand kilometres, and run at a tangent from the capital itself and between the chief cities of the eighty odd departments which make up modern France. ”

“ The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; ”

“ Government roads are one thing; native roads are quite another. Sudden descents to fordable streams and sudden ascents to the opposite banks are succeeded by long stretches of passage through cultivated fields, where there appears no sign of road at all. ”

“ This, as the white settler drifted in, became the winter-road; then, as civilization stifled the call of the wild, there uprose from swamp and muskeg the crude corduroy, expanding by degrees into the half-graded highway, until the turnpike and toll-bar, with its despotic keeper, exacted its tribute from progress. ”

“ By means of this body legislative action has been secured in many States relative to the improvement of the public highways, the people have been educated up to the point where they now see the absolute necessity for good roads, roads that will not be a drag upon our civilization and progress. ”

“ One of our great material blessings is the outstanding network of roads and highways that spreads across this vast continent. Freedom of travel and the romance of the road are vital parts of our heritage, and they helped to make America great. Four million miles of streets and roads make it possible for the average citizen to drive to virtually every corner of our country—to enjoy America in all its beauty and variety. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once a year, father gets a gang of men and tackles every section of road that borders upon our land, and our roads are the best around here. I wish the government would take up this matter of making roads and settle it. If we had good, smooth, country roads, such as they have in some parts of Europe, we would be able to travel comfortably over them all through the year, and our draught animals would last longer, for they would not have to expend so much energy in drawing their loads. ”

“ Roads so straight that they might have been cut with a knife, breaking away at the villages round which they make rectilinear patterns, like the petals of meagre flowers. The English country road is less rational and less sensible, but much more shady and companionable. ”

“ This road, which was made last year by subscription, in order to give employment to the poor in a period of great distress, is a good wide macadamized highway, with a footpath on each side; but the people of the country make little use of it, as they have no wheeled carriages. ”

“ As good roads have been due chiefly to state and county, and more recently to national aid, it is but natural that they should have been constructed where the traffic is heaviest connecting the main centers. ”

“ Numerous organizations, commonly known as trail associations, had promoted the marking of through routes, some extending entirely across the United States, some interstate in character and extending across two or more States, others of a more or less local significance only. In some cases the promotion of routes was done for the purpose of furthering road building by arousing, developing and maintaining local public opinion. Some were promoted more or less directly for commercial purposes, many were organized and maintained to promote and advertise some purely localized interests. ”

“ In Great Britain the road department, after much experience, is now brought into a system by which the highways are made and upheld by dues directly levied on those who travel or use them,—excepting, indeed, such roads as are situated in very remote parts of the country, where the Government, with the most enlightened policy, has either executed the works directly by the troops upon the peace establishment, as in the case of General Wade’s army, or given aid towards the original formation of extensive lines of road, for opening the more remote districts of the country. ”

“ The public have a right to lay out ways for purposes of business, amusement, or recreation, as to markets, to public parks or commons, to places of historic interest or beautiful natural scenery.1 And such ways may be established by prescription, by dedication, or by the acts of the proper public authorities. Twenty years' uninterrupted use by the public will make a prescriptive highway. Many of the old roads in our towns and cities have become public thoroughfares by prescriptive use, which began in colonial days, and perhaps then followed Indian trails, or were first used as bridle-paths. ”

“ The state system should cover a greater per cent of the roads than a national system can hope to do. The effort seems to be to take over about 10 per cent of the established roads as state highways. Such roads, if carefully selected and located, can accommodate from 90 to 95 per cent of the inhabitants of the state. ”