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 MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

To the Congress of the United States:

On April 14, 1941, I appointed a committee, known as the National Interregional Highway Committee, to investigate the need for a limited system of national highways to improve the facilities now available for interregional transportation, and to advise the Federal Works Administrator as to the desirable character of such improvement, and the possibility of utilizing some of the manpower and industrial capacity expected to be available at the end of the war.

The committee, with the aid of a staff provided by the Public Roads Administration, made careful and extended studies of the subject, and has submitted to me its final report which I transmit herewith and commend to the favorable consideration of the Congress. The report recommends the designation and improvement to high standards of a national system of rural and urban highways totaling approximately 34,000 miles and interconnecting the principal geographic regions of the country.

The recommended system follows in general the routes of existing Federal-aid highways, and when fully improved will meet to optimum degree the needs of interregional and intercity highway transportation. Its development also will establish a transcontinental network of modern roads essential to the future economic welfare and defense of the Nation.

While the annual rate of expenditure to accomplish the improvement of the rural and urban sections of the system over a reasonable period of years will be dependent upon the availability of manpower and materials, and upon other factors, the required expenditure is estimated at $750,000,000 annually. The over-all expenditures would be approximately equally divided between urban and rural sections of the system.

The improvement of a limited mileage of the most heavily traveled highways obviously represents a major segment of the road replacement and modernization program which will confront the Nation in post-war years, in rural and urban communities alike. The committee found that the national network outlined in its report comprises only 1 percent of the total road mileage of the United States but carries 20 percent of the total travel.

Continued development of the vast network of rural secondary roads and city thoroughfares, which serve as feeder lines and provide land-access service, likewise has an important place in the over-all program, together with the repair or reconstruction of a large mileage of Federal and State primary highways not embraced within the interregional network.

I commend especially to the consideration of the Congress the recommendation that minimum standards of design and construction be established cooperatively with the States for all projects embraced within a designated interregional system. This, it seems to me, is III