Page:Needs of the Highway Systems, 1955–84.pdf/24

20 registration fees and other special user taxes are continued, if allowance is made for the estimated increases in vehicle registration and use of motor fuel during the next 10-year period, and if the current rates of expenditures for maintenance and administration are continued, it is estimated that $47 billion will become available for highway construction. Thus a deficit of $54 billion must be overcome if the estimated 10-year needs are to be met.

Should the interstate system be completed in that period, on the basis of these cost estimates, it would be in a condition adequate for 1974 traffic, and need for expenditures on that system would drop sharply. On the other systems, however, improvements in the 10-year period would be confined to sections that otherwise would be inadequate for 1964 traffic. Thus, as shown in figures 3 and 4, expenditures for construction on the other systems, and maintenance and administration costs on all systems, would continue to be substantial and would steadily increase.

Decision as to a suitable financing program must take into consideration the proportion of the total cost that can and should be borne by each of the various jurisdictions involved—Federal, State, and local. Decision must also be influenced by the amount of expenditure that may properly be devoted to highway construction during any period in relation to expenditures for other public works and in relation to the entire economy of the country. And decision must also take into consideration the means by which funds can be made available—such means as general taxation, highway-user taxation, and borrowing through general-obligation or toll-revenue bonds. All these means are used, singly or in combination, in financing the various segments of our highway systems.

Recognizing the need for a broad review of the whole problem of highway needs and finance, the President, since the passage of the 1954 Federal-Aid Highway Act, appointed an Advisory Committee on a National Highway Program to recommend a means for modernizing the Nation’s road and street network. The President also requested the governors to review the same problem and advise him as to the manner in which the States could most effectively cooperate with the Federal Government in its solution.

A special committee representing the governors was set up, and its recommendations were transmitted to the President in the report of the Executive Committee of the Governors’ Conference, in December 1954. This report recommended that—

for purposes of financing, the various highway systems should be divided into three categories—the interstate system, including essential urban access roads, other Federal-aid systems, and the State and local systems.

It further recommended that (1) the Federal Government should assume primary responsibility, with State participation, for financing the interstate system, and 3) so long as the Federal Government levies excise taxes on motor fuels, lubricants, and motor vehicles, it should continue to make allocations to the States for highway construction on the other Federal-aid systems.

This report is particularly significant in that it did not recommend that the Federal Government relinquish excise taxes on motor fuels, lubricants, and motor vehicles. The governors’ representatives also recommended that the cost of meeting the total highway construction