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 THE WAR’S EFFECT ON THE HIGHWAY PROGRAM

There was close agreement between the sums estimated as required in the 1941 report and the amounts subsequently authorized and expended. The amount estimated for access roads was specified as a minimum, not including some needs which at the time could not be estimated. The sum subsequently appropriated substantially exceeded this minimum estimate. As suggested by the report, the construction of access roads was the work of greatest urgency. It was work that simply had to be done to provide access of the barest adequacy to military reservations, war production plants, and sources of strategic war materials. It was, therefore, the class of road-building activity that encountered the least impediment in the various restrictive measures applied during the war. But this does not mean that the effort to carry out even this most necessary road-construction work was wholly unobstructed. On the contrary, it was beset constantly with indecision, delay, and restrictions often arbitrarily and unintelligently applied, that began with the approval of projects, continued through the endorsement of plans, and persisted to the completion of projects.

THE LESSONS LEARNED

The fact that the strategic network improvement as provided for and as accomplished differed in widest measure from the estimated need does not mean that needs did not exist in the magnitude of the estimate. The estimate was extremely conservative. The existing needs, some of them of most serious character, simply were not met. For the most part, we went through the war with the highways we had at its beginning. Even the gravest deficiencies went unrectified. Not only construction, but also maintenance activity was radically curtailed by arbitrary controls imposed. Road surfaces deteriorated. On high military authority, roads were pronounced expendable.

In this experience of World War II, all concerned with responsibility for the condition of the country’s highways and with the efficiency of highway transportation for peace or war may find a valuable lesson. The lesson is that when war starts, major road building stops. The major facilities required for the service of peacetime traffic are the arterial highway facilities required for service in a future war and they must be built in time of peace. There is no reason to expect that the demands of combatant forces during a future war will be more tolerant of highway construction activity than they were in World War II.

WORK IN ADVANCE OF THE DEFENSE HIGHWAY ACT

The whole story of the work that was done to meet the more urgent highway needs of the last war is not told in the figures of table 2. Much had been done in advance of the passage of the Defense Highway Act of 1941—and even before the February 1 report was rendered—to 63