Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/394

 encountered was 35, with a few States having limits of 40 or 45 m.p.h. No highway, regardless of how designed, could be properly fitted to the needs of such a conglomeration of vehicles and regulations. Not surprisingly, deaths and injuries soared.



There were also signs of pessimism in some quarters as to the ability to cope with the unbridled growth in motor vehicle usage through highway construction alone. Taking note of the heavy weekend demands being placed on improved highways, one State highway commission noted in 1926:

It seems quite clear to the commission that the regulation of traffic is the first step toward adequate use of the highways. Indeed, the number of vehicles placed upon the highways each year is proportionately greater than the miles of highway which are added. The conditions of traveling, instead of becoming better, are becoming worse, due to congestion on these roads, and the entire solution does not seem to lie in the building of more roads, but rather in the regulation of traffic that goes over them.

This philosophy was to find expression many times over in the years ahead. Traffic, however, continued to increase in volume.

Partly as a result of the wide disparity in design practices between the States, a new form of leadership in the art of highway design began to assert itself toward the end of this period. This was the Committee on Standards of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), which had been formed in 1914. Initially, AASHO’s Committee on Standards confined itself to disseminating information on design to its members, but in 1928 it proposed that the Association adopt “standards of practice” to guide the member States in technical matters in which some uniformity from State to State was urgently needed. The resulting first standards, 1928, prescribed:


 * That whenever practicable, shoulders shall have a standard width of not less than 8 feet.
 * That on pavements, 10 feet shall be considered as the standard width for each traffic lane.
 * That the crown of a two-lane concrete pavement shall be 1 inch.
 * That no part of a concrete pavement shall have a thickness of less than 6 inches. 388