Page:Report of Joint Board on Interstate Highways.pdf/11

 promotion must have been issued. The number of such delegations desiring to appear would have prolonged the work of selection unreasonably if, indeed, it would not have defeated the whole undertaking. To have invited a special group of organizations or local interests to attend hearings to the exclusion of others would have been impossible in an official body like the Board. Questions raised at such hearings would inevitably have resulted in placing the Board in the position of an arbiter among the numerous trail organizations and other local interests; and such an event would have embarrassed the Board to so serious a degree that its purpose would probably have been defeated.

Moreover, there was available through the several state highway departments and in the Bureau of Public Roads a large amount of information available to all States and to the Board in assisting them to arrive at definite conclusions regarding the respective merits of roads or routes under consideration.

Further, had the Board permitted itself to be placed in a position of selecting in toto certain predetermined routes, like the marked trails, because they existed in that particular status, and of similarly rejecting other marked routes, a difficult legal question might have been raised. The Government, at no time and through no agency, had ever officially recognized any system of marked trails or routes except the primary or interstate classification of the federal aid highway system, and no authority had ever been given to any governmental agency to such end. The Joint Board, therefore, felt it necessary, if not indeed imperative, that its task be so handled as to preclude any appearance of giving an official status to any predetermined route or combination of routes.

The Group Meetings produced a tentative system of approximately 81,000 miles of road, distributed as shown in Table 1 of Appendix V, and representing 2.8 per cent of the total public road mileage of the country.

This tentative system was then referred to a meeting of the Board in Washington, August 3-4, and was there adjusted and reduced to approximately 50,100 miles, as shown in Table II of Appendix V. Separate maps of each State were then prepared and submitted to the respective States for confirmation, with the privilege of making such minor alterations and corrections as might to them appear necessary or advisable. Such changes as were made involved generally interstate sections of routes only and in only five instances were any changes required at state line connections. The total mileage is shown on Table III of Appendix V, and is approximately 75,800 miles.