Highway department

“ Obviously, the strong emphasis on training within FHWA has influenced the economical staffing of the Federal agency that administers the Federal-aid highway program. Congress saw the validity of this philosophy and, in the 1970 Highway Act, authorized the creation of a National Highway Institute (NHI) with the express purpose to “. . . develop and administer, in cooperation with the State highway departments, training programs of instruction for Federal Highway Administration and State and local highway department employees engaged or to be engaged in Federal-aid highway work.” ”

“ The authority of the state highway department varies in the several states, but in general the departments serve in the dual capacity of general advisers to the county and township authorities on road matters and as the executive authority responsible for the construction of those highways that are built entirely or in part from state or federal funds. ”

“ To carry out the work directed by Congress, the Secretary created the Office of Road Inquiry, the small beginning from which the world’s largest highway program was to develop.
When the Federal interest in roads was reinstituted in 1893, the appropriation was made to the Department of Agriculture because the recognized problem was in the rural areas—there were not enough adequate roads for the farmers to get their produce to the railroad terminals and even nearby towns. The cities and larger towns were considered to be adequately satisfying their own internal road needs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Proper regulation and control of traffic are accordingly as essential to a GOOD highway system as are proper plans for its building and the use of proper materials in its construction.
Engineers and builders are the men behind the line in the battle for good roads. Maintenance forces and traffic officers are the men on the firing line. The maintenance engineers must see that roads once built are maintained in adequate condition for travel. Traffic officers must see that travel uses these roads properly. ”

“ On this basis, the highway department can develop long-range plans for maintenance operations and evaluate performance of the various field organizational units. This, in turn, indicates where additional training is needed. Furthermore, such a system provides the manager with the information needed to insure that equipment is being used efficiently and effectively, and to aid him in selecting the best unit for the work to be done.
Grading operations on Interstate 94 in North Dakota. After a water distribution truck moistens the soil, sheeps foot and ballastable rollers compact it. ”

“ A detailed study of the status of improvement of the National System of Interstate Highways has been made, with the complete cooperation of every State highway department. The Secretary of Defense and the National Security Resources Board have been invited to cooperate and have responded with suggestion of the indicated or potential needs for improved highways for the national defense ”

“ Unlike the railroads, local highways are built, owned, and maintained by the state or its municipal subdivisions. The state has a primary and immediate concern in their safe and economical administration. The present regulations, or any others of like purpose, if they are to accomplish their end, must be applied alike to interstate and intrastate traffic both moving in large volume over the highways. The fact that they affect alike shippers in interstate and intrastate commerce in large number within as well as without the state is a safeguard against their abuse. ”

“ If at any time the department, with the advice of the Departmental Transportation Advisory Committee, determines that the corridor protection program of local governmental agencies, with respect to any highway which has been designated as an official state scenic highway, no longer adequately carries out responsibility of the local governmental agencies for the protection of the scenic corridor, it may revoke the designation of the highway as an official state scenic highway and remove the signs which so indicate the highway. ”

“ The highway location problems now are to find those places to build the roads that will provide an adequate highway facility for the particular traffic to be served and, at the same time, cause a minimal disruption of families, a minimum disturbance of the landscape, and the least adverse effect on such things as established school districts, church parishes, park areas and historical sites. The FHWA’s role in location is largely to make certain that State highway departments have placed in proper relationship the various engineering, social, and environmental elements of highway location. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In establishing and applying such standards for, and undertaking the development of, official scenic highways, the department shall take into consideration the concept of the "complete highway," which is a highway which incorporates not only safety, utility, and economy but also beauty. The department shall also take into consideration in establishing such standards that, in a "complete highway," pleasing appearance is a consideration in the planning and design process. ”

“ Traffic growth was not uniform but was concentrated most heavily in the industrial States and, to a large extent, on a very small mileage near and between the large cities. Yet it was politically impossible for the highway departments to concentrate their funds on this small mileage. Their programs were designed to distribute highway work rather evenly over their States, and in a situation where all roads needed some improvement, it was not possible to deny some areas in order to build a few miles of costly superhighways near the cities. ”

“ THE purpose of highways is to serve travel.
This being so, the safety, the convenience and the comfort of traffic must ever be uppermost in the minds of highway builders. The highway must be planned to make its use safe. It must be designed to make travel economical. And with these factors of safety and economy, there must always be included the additional factors of comfort and enjoyment in highway use. ”

“ The total length of the highways included in the strategic network is approximately 78,800 miles. Within a system of this extent, there naturally are differences of importance among the roads included, even while as a whole the system comprises the most important highways. In its review in 1941, the War Department indicated such distinctions among the routes included in the network. In general, it found that the routes of greatest importance coincided with those that had previously been chosen by the Bureau of Public Roads as desirable of inclusion in a system of interregional highways. ”

“ Private financial interests are still undertaking to commercialize and exploit the traffic on the roads of the state and Federal Aid highway systems by the construction and operation of toll bridges at points where traffic is concentrated as a result of the vast expenditure of public funds on the construction of these free highways ”

“ James’ engineers studied the details of State maintenance in States that had effective highway departments and also in selected counties, some with good maintenance programs and some with poor ones. They also persuaded a number of strategically located counties with new bond-financed roads to introduce adequate maintenance on one selected demonstration road in each county, the work to be under OPR supervision. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All of the states should enact statutes requiring the railroads to participate in the cost of grade separation structures and in line with well established precedent, the share of the railroad companies in the total cost of such grade separations, including all necessary approaches and drainage structures, should not be less than no per cent; and that all wigwag or flashing signals be installed on the right side of the highway approaching the grade crossing, and that center installation of such signals be used only when side installation is utterly impracticable. ”

“ The relinquished former portion of Route 86 within the City of Imperial is not a state highway and is not eligible for adoption under Section 81. For the relinquished former portion of Route 86, the City of Imperial shall install and maintain within its jurisdiction signs directing motorists to the continuation of Route 86 to the extent deemed necessary by the department. The City of Imperial shall ensure the continuity of traffic flow on the relinquished portion of Route 86 within its jurisdiction, including any traffic signal progression. ”

“ Not all studies covered all aspects of the problem, other consultants entered the field, and in some States repeat studies were carried out to measure the effectiveness of programs adopted as a result of the original studies or to up date the earlier recommendations in light of unanticipated changes of conditions, notably the rate of traffic growth. With the attention given to the highway needs studies, the use of statewide highway planning data had come into its own in the decade after the war and established highway planning as an essential function of the highway departments. ”

“ Nothing contained in this article shall prevent the department, either by acquisition or by condemnation, from terminating easements of access to any state highway not in the California Freeway and Expressway System, provided that such action by the department shall not have the effect of including the highway in the California Freeway and Expressway System. ”

“ 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 Department having adopted a rule to the effect that the rural delivery service would only be established along reasonably good roads, and that a carrier need not go out unless the roads were in fit condition spurred the inhabitants up to better attention of the roads for after a man once got in the habit of receiving his mail daily he wanted it regularly. ”

“ Traffic census shows a 40 per cent increase in travel over this section in the past three years, greatly overstressing the maximum economic capacity of the road. It is estimated that present travel will increase 175 per cent in the next ten years.
The Ridge Route was constructed in 1914 as one of the first projects undertaken by the California Highway Commission. The total motor vehicle registration of the state in that year was 125,516 as compared with a present registration of 2,015,418. ”

“ The State highway departments cannot, if they would, avoid the responsibility of major contribution to such planning effort when it is undertaken, as surely, soon or late it will be, in every State. The State highway planning surveys will be the expected source of most of the facts required in that planning. ”