Page:Report of Joint Board on Interstate Highways.pdf/7

 to mark the routes was made in return for the local support given to the organization; in a few cases actual road construction was furthered by the organization. In most instances, however, a more or less careless marking was all that a community got for its outlay, which ranged from a few hundred dollars annually to as much as $5,000 in extreme cases.

Although no records had ever been systematically collected in an effort to cover the whole field, there appeared in the official files of the States and of the Bureau of Public Roads evidence that at least 250 marked trails existed in the country. These were sponsored by at least one hundred regularly organized associations supporting some kind of headquarters and issuing maps, advertising, or other promotion material. It is impossible to estimate the cost to the public of these activities; but when the 150 trails are omitted for which no record of a definite organization appears in the record, it may conservatively be estimated that the 100 active organizations handled at least $6,000 per year, or a total of $600,000.

In the course of the growth and development of these marked trails, several undesirable features appeared which led directly to the action which was taken by the Association of State Highway Officials.

When it is considered that the work done by the numerous trails organizations was entirely without correlation of any kind, it is not surprising to find that the routes selected and marked or mapped overlapped each other frequently, thereby causing confusion. Specific cases were studied in connection with the work of the Joint Board in which as much as 70 per cent of the entire length of a marked trail lapped other routes. In many cases 40 or 50 per cent of the mileage of one route lapped others and sometimes as many as eleven different marked trails involved in parts of greater or less length in a single trail. One section of road is known to have carried eight different sets of route markers for a considerable distance. Two and three different sets of markers on the same road were common; and four and even five sets of markers were not infrequently found. This confusion finally resulted in complaints from the public that road marking was becoming in many cases more annoying than helpful. were

On the other hand, it was almost as common to find two or more separate roads bearing the same designation. One of the most vigorously promoted routes has at several points three alternate lines, and over most of its length there exists a duplicate location. This resulted from the fact that in promoting the route and inviting local support interested organizations made their layout where they could secure local support, and being