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 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

Washington.

The , The White House.


 * I transmit, with my approval, the final report of the National Interregional Highway Committee appointed by you on April 14, 1941.

In your letter of that date to the Honorable John M. Carmody, then Administrator, Federal Works Agency, you expressed the hope that as a result of the Committee’s recommendations it would be possible to prepare detailed plans and specifications for the construction of a national system of interregional highways to utilize some of the manpower and industrial capacity which will be available at the termination of the war emergency.

The system of interregional highways which the Committee recommends has been found to meet in optimum degree the needs of interregional highway traffic, and I particularly commend to your notice the views of the Committee concerning the special importance of those sections of the system located within and near our larger cities and metropolitan areas.

The Defense Highway Act of 1941 authorized a Federal appropriation of $10,000,000 to be apportioned among the several States and matched by them to provide a fund for the making of surveys and plans for future highway construction. The funds authorized have been apportioned, and have been allotted in substantial part to the preparation of detailed plans and specifications for sections of highway included in the system the Committee recommends. The further application of these funds largely to the system, in my opinion a desirable requirement, will assure the availability of complete plans for the construction of important highways of an estimated cost of about $400,000,000.

More recently the Congress has authorized expenditure in each State of an amount of the unobligated balance of Federal-aid highway funds not exceeding the State’s apportionment of a national total of $50,000,000, together with matching State funds, for additional surveys and plans for post-war highway construction.

By these two measures generous provision has been made for the preparatory work of surveying and planning which is necessary to assure the readiness of a large body of highway construction projects at the end of the war. There is, however, another equally important measure of preparation that must be taken if work on the planned projects is to begin promptly when peace returns. Rights-of-way for the planned improvements must be in hand; and funds for this purpose, clearly expendable during the war, should be made available. The recent act of Congress (Public Law No. 146, 78th Cong.) provides VII