Editorials

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

Published in the Interest of Good Roads by the ARIZONA HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

A PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT

The American Road Builders' Association, comprising in its membership representatives of those public officials, educators, engineers, contractors, manufacturers and others who are responsible for the development of sound principles of highway planning and for their application to meet the needs of the American people, have formulated many policies for highway development during the period just ahead of us.

To insure an adequate consideration of the conditions that now confront highway improvement, it is necessary that industrialists, business men, public officials and taxpayers all see the highway system of the United States as something more than a certain mileage of improved roads over which they may drive their motor cars.

The American Highway system is in fact that indispensable servant of a wide variety of social and economic activities that touch intimately the lives of all. It helps also to achieve a political unity for the nation and to develop a national consciousness that is a valuable safeguard against the influence of sectionalism. But quite aside from these social and community values is the fact that the highways provide the foundation upon which rests approximately onetenth of the employment and industrial activity of the nation. A striking variety of industries, trades, crafts, services and other occupations are dependent on them; the manufacture and sale of motor vehicles from the raw materials to the dealer's floor, the production, refining and transportation of gasoline and lubricants, the manufacture and distribution of tires and other motor accesories, the building and operation of service stations, filling stations, garages and parking lots, the writing of automobile insurance, the operation of wayside stands all these and many more provide employment in private enterprise for billions of dollars of capital and millions of our people. All this employment is contingent on the development and maintenance of a national highway network equal at all times to the requirements of modern motor transportation.

The actual design and construction of the highway, including the production and distribution of all the necessary materials and equipment, constitute after all, but a minor fraction of the industry trade and employment that are dependent on the highways. We know of no other investment of public funds by the American people that ever has paid so richly, both in social and community values and in actual employment and profits in private enterprise. Our highway investment, already made and yet to be made, will continue to pay on a comparable scale if the American people will but understand these facts.

OUR COVER PICTURE

Here is the grandfather of the chain of man-made lakes which have made the Arizona desert blossom as the rose. The photograph, by Norman G. Wallace, is of Roosevelt Lake, reached over Highway 88, or better known as the Apache Trail. This lake is situated in a region made famous in song and story.

HIGHWAY HEADACHES