Cooperative Road Building by State and National Governments

THE decade just past has been marked by greater improvement of the roads of the United States and a large increase in highway transportation than any other in the history of the country. As, from our present position, we look back upon the way we have come in these ten years, the progress seems truly remarkable. Coincidentally this same period covers the span of the Federal Aid road legislation and its administration under the Department of Agriculture. As we entered the decade in 1916 there were less than 2,500,000 motor vehicles in the entire country and less than 73 000 of these were registered as motor trucks. Today the trucks alone are more numerous than all motor vehicles at that time, and the total has doubled and twice redoubled in the 10year period.

In 1916 there were approximately 277,000 miles of surfaced roads in the entire country, only a small percentage of which were of the types now regarded as adequate for motor vehicle traffic. Today the mileage of surfaced roads is nearly, if not quite twice as great as it was 10 years ago and more than 100,000 miles are improved with types of surface more satisfactory 'for service than waterbound macadam-a record of progress the more remarkable if it is remembered that during the same 10-year period it has been necessary to reconstruct a very large part of the mileage previously constructed. Ten years ago there were only five states in which there was as much as a single improved trans-state highway. They were Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Marylandall eastern states and all of that small group in which the movement for better highways had been begun in the nineties. Today 25 statas have improved highways continuous from border to border in at least one direction and 16 of these have completed such transstate arteries in two directions In 1916 there were 16 states in which there was no State Highway Department that could be recognized as competent to administer the construction of Federal-aid roads, nor the semblance of a plan for the development of a State system of highways, and even in those states in which the recently created State Agency was endeavoring to introduce scientific and business-like methods of highway improveinent there were only a few in which a connected State highway system had yet been clearly conceived. Today there is in every state a definitely designated state highway system, to the improvement of which the state governments are applying their resources.

By W. M. JARDINE, Secretary of Agriculture LAST DECADE IMPORTANT

These remarkable changes, occurring within the brief period of 10 years, distinguish the last decade as the most important in highway history; but the developments which are destined to have the most far-reaching influence upon the future are the establishment of the Federal-aid policy and the elaborate and productive researches which have been carried out by the Federal and State departments and other agencies. Of the Federal-aid policy it may be said that the 56,000 miles of road which have been improved under it are of less significance than the principles upon which the policy is founded, and which are thus given Nation-wide importance.

It is a first principle of the Federalaid policy that all roads, by the nature of their traffic, are stamped as of local. State or interstate importance, and that this fact should be recognized in the administration and financing of their improvement. The law has, therefore, required the designation of a definite Federal-aid highway system including those roads of interstate importance in the improvement of which the national and State governments may properly combine their efforts.

From the first it has been required that the State should itself,, participate directly with the Federal agency through a department of its government competent to assume the responsibility. In retrospect, this provision of the law appears as, perhaps, the most important Federal contribution, responsible, as it doubtless was for the creation and strengthening of highway departments in many of the States. It is a notable fact that these organizations are among the most efficient of State institutions, and it is certain that to them must be ascribed the largest measure of credit for the remarkable improvements of our highways. There is gratification, also, in the splendid cooperation which has at all times marked their relations, with the Bureau of Public Roads.

ROAD TESTS STUDIED

The importance of the contributions to engineering science which have resulted from the research and expertmentation that has been so vigorously conducted since 1920 can scarcely be over-estimated. The Bates road tests by the Illinois department, the Pittsburg, California, experiments and the various tests of the Bureau of Public Roads are known and studied throughout the world. By the general adoption of the thickened-edge section, a direct result of this research the public has already benefited through increased service and lower costs, and the saving will go on as long as concrete roads are built. As the result of a single study completed recently by the Bureau of Public Roads by which it has been demonstrated that brick 2 and 21½ inches in thickness may be used to give the servics for which 3 and 4-inch brick have previously been used, it is estimated that large annual savings are possible. A few thousand dollars and the earnest and devoted work of three or four of the Bureau's engineers for less than a year have thus returned to the taxрауers of the States and municipalities. wherever brick pavements are built, many times the expenditure in poten tial cost reduction.

Similarly the Bureau's studies of grading and concrete pavement operat'ons have pointed the way to an improvement in the efficiency of such operations as a result of which it has reen found possible in some cases with the same equipment to increase production by 50 to 100 per cent. The results of these studies are im mediately apparent in reduced cos's

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

and enhanced efficiency. In other cases, as in the studies of soils to de termine their characteristics as highway subgrades and in the various in vestigations of the effect upon road ways of traffic and climatic influences, the object sought is complicated by so many variable factors that the studies must be long continued before definite results may be expected. But these researches, penetrating as they do to the very fundamentals of highway de sign, are likely in the end to be the most valuable of all, and it is not only possible but probable that future gen erations of road builders may regard them as in the same category as those fundamental observations by which the design of bridges has been converted from a rule-of-thumb process into an exact and dependable science.

CONTEMPLATION OF FUTURE

Turning from retrospection to the contemplation of the future, I am im pressed with the necessity of making adequate provision for the increasing service that will be expected of the highways. If the number of motor ve hicles has increased from two and a half to 20,000,000 in 10 years, there is no reason to believe that the increase will be abruptly halted now, although we may expect some falling off in the rate. As traffic increases directly in proportion to the motor vehicles in service, we must expect that the con ditions for which we now build will be intensified in the future. The highway service we are now providing must be capable of expansion to meet the needs of the growing traffic as these mature. Doubtless the concern of the immedi ate future is not for all of you the same. To some it is the completion of an initial improvement of a large mile age, previously unimproved, in the face of a demand for more adequate facili ties on some of the highways already well developed. To those who face this situation the problem is to get the traffic through to effect some de gree of improvement over a whole high way system as rapidly as possible in order to give the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number of people.

Others among you more fortunate, I believe-have systems of main roads already improved and largely surfaced, and the immediate concern is the selec tive betterment of sections of the sys tem to relieve congestion, eliminate danger, and generally to adjust the ex isting improvement to the growing needs of a still increasing traffic.

To all alike, however, the problem of the present is to serve as adequately as possible the present needs, keeping in mind at the same time the greater needs of the future, and making suit able provision for their accommoda tion when the time arrives. This is the policy of stage construction, a sound policy because it recognizes the utter impossibility of building once for all a system of highways which may be re garded as a finished product, but rath er substitutes for that conception the principle of progressive improvement.

The construction of earth roads on the lines and grades and with the drain age provisions that will be required by the pavement of the future is a recog nized application of the stage-construc tion principle. But it has much wider application than that. The acquisition of rights of way of ample width for the future so that, when the need arises, it will be possible without heavy expense or the injury of private property to ef fect the necessary improvements, is an other highly important application. The same foresighted policy suggests the location of the improved highways in relation to railroads at crossings in such manner as to provide satisfactory for separation of grades, and it applies also to provisions for the construction of future by-pass highways around cities, and for the diversion of traffic from routes of growing congestion.

ANTICIPATION OF NEEDS

To anticipate thus the needs of the future implies a knowledge of the probable traffic importance of the various roads which can only be obtained by a careful and detailed study of the present distribution and the factors inherent in the economic and physical characteristics of the State. Such studies have been made by the Bureau of Public Roads in cooperation with the highway departments of a number of the States, and the reports, recently published, are doubtless familiar to many of you. The highway department that has in its possession such information as these surveys supply can really pian for the future. It has substituted facts for opinions; it knows the present and probable future importance of its roads; it knows the density and also the weight of the traffic to which each road is now subjected and to which it is likely to be subjected in the near fu ture. It can, therefore, devise a rea sonable program of construction ex tending into the future: it can budget its funds intelligently; it can determine the order in which the various high ways should be improved and give a satisfactory answer to those who favor priority for other roads; and it has in its possession an adequate basis for the necessary decision as to the char acter of improvement required for each road. This is sound and businesslike admin istration of highway improvements. It is the reverse of the casual and hap hazard procedure which too often has subjected the business of highway im provement to political manipulation, and produced discontinuous, unbalanced, and uneconomical development instead of well articulated systems of im proved highways.

In the Federal-aid work we feel the need of such precise information daily and I look forward hopefully to a not far distant time when it will be avail able in all states. Not all the exact information it is possible to obtain, however, will suf fice to provide an orderly and system atic improvement of the main roads in the States which still rely upon the fi nancial assistance of the counties to carry out the State program. Certainly there has been experience enough to prove that complete connection of main arteries is practically impossible so long as there is dependence upon coun ty financing. The reasons are perfect ly obvious. All sections of the major State roads in the various counties are not invariably the roads in which the county interest is the greatest.

By their very nature the roads of the State and Federal-aid systems are the most heavily traveled highways. In many instances the traffic which de mands their improvement is contrib uted in a smaller degree by counties through which they pass than by other counties or even other States. It is not unnatural that the authorities of such counties should be unwilling, and they often are financially unable, to assume a share in the cost of the im provement. So long as any State falls to provide State funds for such roads the development of the main State and interstate roads along strictly economic lines will be hampered.

STATES GIVEN EXTRA TIME

Full operations of the provision of the Federal Highway Act which aims to correct this condition has been twice deferred in the Federal legislation to give the States concerned more time to