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In all of the States, a long and severe depression followed independence. Recovery was hampered by the wretched condition of the roads, which had become practically impassable in many places from lack of maintenance during the war.

Business began to pick up about 1787, and with the increase in trade came a rapid increase in road traffic, especially near the larger cities. The feeble efforts of the local authorities were not equal to keeping the roads in repair under this traffic, so there was widespread agitation for State assistance to help maintain the principal roads. The debt-burdened State governments met this challenge by appealing to private capital for the funds to build better highways. They chartered private turnpike companies, conferring on them authority to build roads and charge tolls to the public for their use. The first of these companies, chartered by Virginia in 1785, built a turnpike road from Alexandria, on the Potomac Eiver, westward to the mountains near Berryville. However, the first to be completed for any considerable distance, and one of the most successful financially, was in Pennsylvania, between Philadelphia and Lancaster.

In February 1791, The Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation submitted to the Pennsylvania Legislature what may be the earliest statewide transportation plan in U.S. history. This plan proposed that the Legislature appoint a Board of Commissioners with power to decide the locations of the principal roads in the State and determine which should be improved by turnpike companies and which ought to be made or repaired at public cost. The board would then have the authority to advertise and award contracts to build and operate the turnpikes, and also to employ persons to repair those roads deemed unsuitable for turnpikes. Similarly, the board would have authority to contract for the construction and operation of toll canals or to make other navigation improvements at public expense.

An important feature of the transportation plan was the voluntary relinquishment by the State for a stated number of years of its right to charter parallel competing facilities that would destroy or diminish the income or revenue of turnpikes or toll navigations already established.

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