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 STANDARDS AND FEATURES OF ROADWAY LOCATION AND DESIGN

Any network of highways that may hereafter be designated officially as an interregional system should embrace as nearly as practicable, within the limits of mileage adopted and subject to the necessities of national extension and interconnection, those general routes along which the heaviest traffic moves or is likely to move in each region traversed. It has been the Committee's aim to select such a system and it believes that, insofar as its necessarily limited studies have permitted, it has made this selection in the system recommended in this report. This network, or a better system selected after more complete study, should be consistently constructed throughout, in all parts of the country, as a well-balanced whole, in the post-war years ahead.

There are existing roads that conform closely to all parts of the recommended system. There will be existing roads conforming more or less closely to any system that may be selected as a better modification of the system recommended. After any such system is finally agreed upon, whenever the improvement or reconstruction of any section of conforming highway is contemplated, it should be built on a location and to a standard of design that will make it a fit and lasting part of the complete interregional system that will be created by such sectional increments.

This incremental construction will be carried out under various auspices. In part, doubtless, it will be done by the Federal Government and States jointly; in part, by the States alone; in part by combined Federal, State, and city effort; in part by State and city cooperation; and possibly in part upon the completely independent initiative of cities. If, built in this manner, the interregional system is to achieve the high degree of consistency of design and utility that is desirable, two arrangements are necessary: First, there must be an agreement upon certain basic standards of roadway design and location, by all authorities likely to have a share of responsibility for its construction. Second, there must be a determination on the part of these authorities and the public that whatever work at any time is done on routes generally conforming to the selected system shall be well done in accordance with the agreed standards. In no other way will it be possible to achieve the timely completion of a consistently useful and wholly satisfactory interregional highway system.

To this end the Committee proposes herein certain basic standards for general adoption. It recommends that these standards be widely considered by all possible cooperating authorities, and that after there has been sufficient opportunity for such consideration, occasion be made at the initiative of the Public Roads Administration to effect agreement as complete and general as possible upon these or other acceptable standards. The Committee recommends further that the agreed standards be made the required basis of any cooperation on 93