Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/294



Since 1938, responding to the direction of the Congress for reports on various aspects of the highway problem was sufficiently demanding almost to be called a regular activity in itself. While not all reports were prepared by the planning staff, planning data, available or collected as necessary, were involved in all.

In response to Section 2 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1948, the Commissioner was directed to report on the “current conditions and deficiencies” of the Interstate System that had been finally designated only on August 2 of the previous year. The report Highway Needs of the National Defense showed graphically the use made of the highway system during the war, still fresh in memory. It covered military traffic on the highways, and even a safe emergency landing of an airplane on the highway. It gave examples of heavy traffic service for employees of industrial plants. One plant was opened on a road on which the average traffic of 700 vehicles was swelled to 14,000 when the plant reached full production. It described many examples of accidents resulting from inadequate highways and unsafe bridges.

But especially, it documented not only the great increase in truck movement, but the greatly increased loads on the average truck. Motor truck vehicle mileage more than doubled during the war years, and the axle loads exceeding 18,000 pounds increased from 12 per thousand trucks prewar to nearly 70 per thousand trucks in 1945. With this twelvefold increase in heavy axle loads, it is small wonder that the highways emerged from the war badly battered. What was made abundantly clear was that under the circumstances of World War II, the use of the highways for military vehicles was very little indeed compared to highway use for moving employees to and from warplants and military establishments and for the movement of goods and manufactured products for the war effort. That in fact the highway became literally a part of the assembly line is most strikingly illustrated by the movement by truck of airplane fuselages from Michigan to Texas for final assembly. The actual experiences of war demonstrated the sound judgment of military and highway officials, when recommending the routes of the Interstate System in 1941, that the greatest value of the system to the military would lie in its part in keeping war industry at maximum production levels.

This damaged WW II transport plane, having made an emergency landing on the highway, was towed to the nearest airport. The wings were removed for safe transport along the route.

War production could be undertaken anywhere. This PT boat was on its way to sea from an inland “shipyard.”

Trucks became a necessary part of the WW II production line. 288