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66 Provisions of the Emergency Relief Act

Similar provisions were carried in the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, fiscal year 1941, relating to the use of relief funds by the Work Projects Administration for planning and building roads important for defense purposes. While relief rolls remained, a total of $85,150,000 of relief funds matched by sponsors’ contributions totaling $28,750,000 was expended, largely for the construction of roads in Army and Navy reservations but also, in part, for access roads to military reservations and defense plants.

Response of the States

Generally, the State highway departments complied readily with requests for the use of their apportioned Federal-aid funds for purposes of study and the planning of access-road improvements. When it came to the construction of such roads, however, the remaining restrictions of the Federal law and similar provisions of State law often presented insurmountable obstacles. Many of the roads were included in neither the Federal-aid nor State highway systems, and many were of such character and location as to be ineligible for construction even with the available Federal-aid secondary road funds.

No such restrictions prevented the application of Federal-aid funds to the strategic network and the States willingly responded to the request of the Public Roads Administration for allotment of as much as possible of the currently available funds to the correction of deficiencies of that system.

Federal-aid programs in 1941

At the end of October 1941, shortly prior to the passage of the Defense Highway Act of that year, the combined Federal-aid programs consisted of projects for the improvement of 11,271 miles of road at an estimated total cost of $397,812,700 including the Federal-aid allotment of $224,135,000. Of these totals, 2,884 miles at an estimated construction cost of $144,392,900 were on the strategic network, and 197 miles estimated to cost $16,584,400 were access roads. Projects particularly directed to the meeting of defense needs, therefore, constituted at that time 27 percent of the mileage and 40 percent of the cost of the current program. An unobligated balance of apportioned funds, the latest of which were those authorized for the fiscal year 1942, remained available for further high-priority uses, to be augmented shortly by apportionment of the fiscal year 1943 funds, last of the prewar authorizations.

TOTAL AMOUNT OF WORK DONE

To the extent that use of these regular Federal-aid funds for access roads and strategic network projects was permitted they were applied for the most part to the needs contemplated in the 1941 report. In final event, these funds, together with the special defense highway appropriations, provided for the improvement of 1,678 bridges