Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/163

 method of estimating future traffic flows, and they found it in the “origin-and-destination survey,” a sampling technique developed in 1944 by the PRA with the help of the Bureau of the Census. The origin-destination surveys were made by interviewing a sample of the urban population at their homes and obtaining from each family in the sample detailed information on the travel habits of its members. Samples varied from as small as 1 dwelling unit in 30 to as high as 1 in 3, but averaged about 1 in 10.

During 1944 and 1945 the State highway departments and local officials, with the help of the PRA, analyzed the needs of 30 large metropolitan areas and 135 cities of 50,000 or less population.

"By providing the means to estimate the traffic volumes that will use any specific route, these studies serve to evaluate the merits of proposals advanced by different groups within an urban area, and to bring together the various local agencies in the support of a single plan. Availability of the facts often permits harmonizing the views of differing factions, each of whose proposals, in the absence of facts, is of necessity based on opinions."

As statewide traffic increased, so did gasoline tax revenues, and inevitably there was political pressure to distribute some of this revenue to the counties as State aid for their roads. In many States a considerable part of the State-collected road-user revenues was redistributed to the counties, and often in greater amounts than was generated within a specific county.

As the State contributions increased, most counties reduced their own support for local roads (the revenues being derived mostly from property taxation) so that by 1947 local governments were carrying only about 40 percent of the cost of construction and maintenance where 20 years before they had carried over 80 percent.

The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Hayden-Cartwright Act of 1934 had provided emergency funds that could be spent on “secondary or feeder” roads off the Federal-aid system “to be agreed upon by the State highway departments and the Secretary of Agriculture.” Although not required by the legislation, the Secretary, through the Bureau of Public Roads, insisted that these funds be spent on connected road systems in each State as a condition for his agreement. The States then, in selecting systems, for the most part, selected the roads carrying the most traffic, but not necessarily those most desired by the local officials. These systems totaled about 138,500 miles, and on them about $245 million of emergency relief and regular Federal-aid funds were spent by the States in the period from 1934 to 1943.

Nevertheless, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the county roads among rural residents, accompanied by an unwillingness to increase taxes to improve them. This feeling led to increased political pressure on the State governments for a larger share of road-user taxes and also pressure on Congress for direct Federal aid to the counties. In 1943 Senator A. T. Stewart of Tennessee introduced a bill to set up a Rural Local Roads Administration with $1.1 billion in Federal funds to be distributed among the counties without going through the State highway departments. This bill never emerged from committee, but its supporters were able to include a very generous measure of assistance for local rural roads in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944.

The 1944 Act authorized the appropriation of $150 million in each of the first 3 postwar years for projects on the “principal secondary and feeder roads” but required that the funds be spent on “a system of such roads selected by the State highway departments in cooperation with the county supervisors, county commissioners, or other appropriate local road officials, and the Commissioner of Public Roads.” The money was to be apportioned to the States one-third according to State area, one-third according to rural population and one-third according to the mileage of rural mail delivery and star routes, and the Federal share of any project was limited to 50 percent.

Congress imposed no mileage or percentage limits on the secondary system, and it soon became apparent to the State highway departments that their previously selected secondary systems were not nearly large enough to satisfy the local authorities. However, the PRA arbitrarily set guidelines for selecting routes which had the effect of limiting the mileage. First, these guidelines required that the State Federal-Aid Primary System and the selected Secondary System be integrated to form continuous networks. Second, the PRA limited the mileage it would approve to a system not larger than could be constructed and maintained with the funds that “might reasonably be expected to be provided” according to past performance in the area.

The system approved by the Commissioner of Public Roads in June 1946 totaled 217,073 miles, but this was just a beginning, as tens of thousands of miles of additional routes were then still under review. According to the PRA, “No route is approved without first assessing its importance by reference to the records made in the planning surveys showing locations of farms, schools, churches, and business establishments, type of existing road improvement, general population distribution, and the amount of traffic.” By June 1947 the Secondary System had increased to 350,809 miles and by 1948 to 377,622 miles. It reached 502,676 miles in 1955.

By the 1944 Act, Congress had limited the National System of Interstate Highways to 40,000 miles and had also provided that the routes should be selected 157