Page:Highway Needs of the National Defense.pdf/106

86 thus were required to recruit the added personnel from greater distances than before. Inductions into the military service, migration of workers, and other manpower stringencies caused still further increases in the distances from home to place of employment. All of these factors had the effect of increasing the dependence of the war worker on automobile transportation.

War worker use of automobiles

This critical situation prompted surveys of war-worker transporta- tion by numerous agencies; and all of them pointed up the absolute need for the continued maintenance of the private automobile as a wartime transportation medium. A study of 749 war plants scattered throughout Michigan, made in 1942 by the State Highway Department, revealed that 75 percent of the workers in those plants traveled to and from their jobs by driving their own cars or riding with another private-car driver.



Employee-transportation studies were also made by State highway departments in other States, generally in cooperation with the Public Roads Administration and the Highway Traffic Advisory Committee to the War Department. An analysis of studies made in 1942 at 94 war plants in 10 States, employing 225,000 workers, indicated that