years, all of the States developed strong planning and research organizations which joined with the Bureau and the universities in the first comprehensive investigation of national highway problems. This national study led directly to Congress authorization in 1944 of a system of “interregional highways” within the Federal-aid system.
In these two Acts Congress not only continued its traditional support for roads in the national forests,[N 1] but also appropriated funds for roads in Indian reservations, national parks, and unreserved lands of the public domain, and for “parkways to give access to national parks, and national monuments, or to become connecting sections of a national parkway plan . . .”
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. For the most part, these improvements were accomplished by the maintenance forces or by small contracts with State funds. But in 1929, for the first time the BPR began to approve Federal aid for “reconstruction” of roads previously improved with Federal-aid funds. By June 1930, nearly 21 miles in five States had been reconstructed, and this mileage increased rapidly in succeeding years.
The roads in the eastern and northern States, where the Federal-aid mileage had been reinforced after World War I with concrete or brick pavements, were still far from worn out by 1930 but were obsolete in alinement, grade and width, resulting in thousands of miles being rebuilt during the 1930’s. In many cases the States made entirely new locations, relinquishing the old roads to the local authorities.
As could be expected, there was no lack of criticism for these abandonments because when the roads were originally paved, it is doubtful that a relocation policy would have been possible. To begin with, in the early 1920’s, property holders would have considered it extravagant to jettison the old road and its improvements. The crying need was for durable surfacing, and most everyone thought the available funds should be spent on this rather than right-of-way and new grading. Then, too, diverting the road from its old course would have been bitterly resisted by landowners along the route, with possibly years of delay in getting the program started. For most of them, the roads were already good enough in alinement and width.
Long distance travel by road had not developed and was not foreseen. For the local movements from one town to its immediate neighbors the indirection of the old roads was not a disadvantage, but an advantage. Motor vehicles were incapable of high speed and were legally restricted to very low speeds. The desire for the present high speed had not been born in a populace still tied to its home places and regarding 30 miles an hour as a breakneck pace. The improved curvature obtainable by slightly cutting the corners of the existing rights-of-way was all that was believed to be needed, and all that could reasonably be foreseen as required in the future.[1]
By 1934 the Federal-aid system, including authorized additions, mostly in national forests and public land areas, comprised 207,231 miles; and 96 percent of it had received some kind of improvement.[N 2] But the improved sections varied widely in adequacy for traffic and in safety for road users. In Chief MacDonald’s words,
Moreover, in the effort to extend surfaced mileage the presence of defects in alignment and the generally lower standards of the earlier work had been tolerated. Bridges inherited from a much earlier period had been held in service though in many cases it was necessary to post them for limited loads and their narrow widths prohibited the safe passing of vehicles on them. Thousands of railroad grade crossings had been allowed to remain, each in some degree hazardous. All these known defects had been tolerated to advance more rapidly the first essential task of smoothing and strengthening the road surfaces to get a growing traffic through.[2]
The improvements eased the worst bottlenecks temporarily, but for many thousands of miles, it was impossible to build a really adequate road on the existing locations. The roads were simply too crooked and the rights-of-way too narrow to permit upgrading to modern standards. More and more, the States began to build new roads on new locations for high speed traffic, relinquishing the old ones to the counties for maintenance.
The locators of these new roads and the Bureau of Public Roads’ engineers who approved them held a philosophy of location that was best expressed in 1920 by Delaware’s influential chief engineer, Charles M. Upham:
In giving consideration to alignment roads may be divided into two classes, roads located within parks, and intended as scenic roads and used mainly by sightseers and tourists, and roads that can be considered as commercial and industrial roads, which would be located within and between business centers, towns and cities
In considering the alignment of commercial roads, or direct routes, it must always be remembered that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and from a commercial standpoint the shortest way is not only the most direct, but with other things equal, is the most economical; therefore, it seems to be practically conceded that ideally aligned commercial roads are those that are laid in absolutely straight lines.
Where there are costly influences entering the problem that make it impossible or impracticable to follow the straight line, then the alignment should approach the straight line, and become a compromise of line, grade, and cost of construction.[3]
This dogma dominated highway engineering in the United States for half a century, leaving a legacy of thousands of miles of absolutely straight monotonous highway.
- ↑ Toll Roads and Free Roads, H. Doc. 272, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 107.
- ↑ T. MacDonald, Federal Aid From The National Viewpoint, The History and Accomplishments of Twenty-Five Years of Federal Aid For Highways (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., Nov. 28, 1944) p. 29.
- ↑ C. Upham, The Alignment, Grade, Width, And Thickness In Design Of Road Surfaces, Public Roads, Vol. 2, Nos. 21–22, Jan.–Feb. 1920, p. 25.
