March 26, 2014

Transportation Then & Now: Highway Planning

The following piece, published in the April 1942 issue of American Highways, discusses how transportation, specifically highways, related to not just to winning World War II but also how the time was critical for the entire future of planning and constructing highways. Check out the piece below, written by Michigan State Highway Commissioner G. Donald Kennedy, to learn how AASHO dealt with this very sensitive time and how state DOTs planned to move forward through and after the war with highway planning.

Things move so rapidly these days that a subject that is good one day is outmoded the next. That is one big trouble. If one lays down any facts or any rules to be followed, he is risking trouble because what is true right now may not be true inside of 24 hours.

There are some matters we should discuss, however, arising from the war situation, which are fundamental in the nature of the war effort itself.

Nothing that war does to the United States, short of actual bombing raids, will be felt by the people as much as curtailment of automobile transportation. For more than quarter century our whole economy—our whole social set-up—has been governed in no small part by the upbuilding of motor transportation.

Development of Highway Industry

We have developed a great highway transportation industry. In it are included not only the manufacturers of automobiles but also those allied industries which are based upon the servicing of the cars themselves and their drivers—the hotel keepers, resort operators, gasoline and oil dealers, garagemen, tire dealers, countless amusement operators, and all others. One-seventh of the gainfully employed people in the United States are occupied in this great highway industry.

We have developed a way of life around the automobile and the modern highway. Our suburban developments, remote recreational areas, and close relationship between town and country are evidences of that way of life.

Motors Turned to War

In the same period when the development of the automobile was under way and all these complementary developments were going on, the military powers of the world were busy learning another method of using automotive equipment. They have been studying and learning how to fight wars in a new way, which it based fundamentally and entirely upon motor vehicles. Today the weapon carries the soldier—not the soldier, the weapon. In terms of modern warfare, the country with the most motors is farthest in front.

But now comes the paradox. This nation, equipped as no other for the production of motors, finds every one of its automobile assembly lines shut down. These lines have been destroyed to make way for other implements of war.

This type of warfare places a premium on resources necessary for mechanized equipment. Today, nations fight for raw materials. And so one of the main battle fronts of our whole worldwide conflict consists of a pincer movement around the rubber-producing areas of the globe. Because this pincer has been so far successful, we find this nation today facing a period of extreme and critical shortage of rubber. The result of that, of course, is no tires.

This is the background against which our highway programs must be shaped. A background that features a great emphasis on mechanized equipment, upon production, and upon a critical shortage of rubber. What, then, should and must be the elements of our highway work in this emergency?

Highways for War Purposes

Road construction programs today are almost entirely in the hands of federal officials. Regulations require that all projects involving federal funds be certified as essential to the war program by the General Staff and the Chief of the U.S. Army Engineer Corps. That applies to regulate Federal Aid as well as to funds available under the Defense Highway Act of 1941.

We know there will be no certification of any construction unless it provides critically needed access to army camps or reservations, access to war industry plants or plant sites, or really necessary improvements to the War Department’s strategic network of highways. To date, to my knowledge, not a single Federal Aid project under the fiscal 1943 program has been certified. There is no disposition to certify projects for the general improvement of the strategic network.

From a war standpoint, one of the first transportation problems is on our seacoasts. We must build roads that will permit rapid movement of men and supplies to strategic points. It is from these coasts that our men must leave to meet the enemy on foreign soil and it is these coasts that are most immediately threatened by the enemy. There must be complete freedom of movement and strategic military highway facilities of the finest type.

On the interior are the training camps, military reservations and other stations from which the men and materials must flow to the seacoasts. There is already tremendous movement of men, trucks, and supplies into and out of these reservations. Access roads are a vital necessity and it is our responsibility to build them.

Going farther away from the fighting front, we come to the industrial plants where the story of victory is being written today. Men cannot fight without weapons and ammunition. From forest, mine, and field are flowing each day the raw materials which are smelted and finally shaped into the materials of war. The parts and finished products from the mills must be moved from plant to plant and from factory to the point where it will be used or stored.

Ships, airplanes, tanks, trucks, guns, ammunition—all must roll off our assembly lines in ever-increasing numbers. We have the facilities and can outproduce any other nation on the face of the earth, but this great system of mass production that we have developed in the United States depends to an extent, not appreciated by many, upon the continued efficient movement of highway transport. This requires access roads and every other facility that we can possibly build to make certain there is no transportation bottleneck.

Essential War Transport

The matter of highway transport today is not alone a matter of building the vitally needed roads for our motor cars and trucks to use. There is also the problem of providing the cars and trucks themselves. The rubber shortage and the necessity for curtailing new car production have hit us in a tender spot. Continued and expanded production is ultimately dependent upon highway transport.

This point is well illustrated by a survey of Michigan defense industrial plants, conducted by the Michigan Highway Planning Survey. We found that out of 741 war production plants in Michigan, 100 receive 100 percent of their material by truck; 111 of these plants ship 100 percent of their products by truck; 72 plants receive and send out all freight by truck. In a more general way, the average of the percentages for all plants is 65.2 percent for incoming freight and 69 percent for outgoing freight that is handled over the highways and streets of Michigan. And every one of the 741 plants uses trucks for at least some portion of incoming or outgoing freight.

What is perhaps more important is the extent to which our workers depend upon highway transportation to reach their jobs. In a study of 749 war production plants in Michigan, there are a total of 434,683 employees. Of this number, 326,000 or 75 percent depend upon their automobiles for transportation to and from work. In 51 of the plants there are nearly 66,000 workers who depend 100 percent upon their automobiles. In every city where these plants are located, more than 60 percent of the workers depend upon automobiles for transportation to and from their jobs.

Though these figures be for Michigan, I know they are typical of thousands of other industrial areas throughout the nation.

There are many other essential needs in our war economy besides production that can only be fulfilled by highway transportation. Our way of living has been so changed that the doctor can no longer depend on the horse and buggy to call upon his patients. He must have automotive transportation. Sanitation services could no longer be effectively rendered without the use of motor vehicle transportation. Ambulances and even some of our delivery services, such as milk, must to a greater or less extent depend on motor vehicles. And then there is the whole great field of public service, including law enforcement and highway construction and maintenance that can be performed in no other way. These services are essential and must be continued. It is part of our job to lead the way and make possible sufficient conservation on our transportation facilities that what we have now and what little we may be able to develop in the future can be made to last through the period of this emergency.

Transportation Conservation

Practical steps are in order. There is no use quibbling about how badly rubber may be needed for this or that purpose. We must realize that the supply is definitely limited and adjust our actions accordingly. In Michigan, the state highway department has launched an experimental plan in the city of Pontiac for the conservation of automobile transportation. We have designed a plan which has the support of the state defense council, the state government, the Pontiac City government, all local civic groups and, most important, the whole-hearted support of organized labor and industry.

We are urging workers to walk to work where possible, to ride the buses rather than use their private cars, and where neither of these alternatives will work, to group together in “clubs” with different members driving each week. We hope to raise the present average of 1.5 persons per car arriving at factory gates to three or four per car. If successful this plan will undoubtedly be extended to other cities in the state and possibly in the nation.

Curtailment of travel which this program is aimed at attaining may reduce current highway revenues but it looks toward a more consistent income over the period of the next two years when the situation is bound to become extremely critical.

Problems of the American Association of State Highway Officials

The American Association of State Highway Officials is facing this problem as well as many others. Highway construction cannot come to a complete halt. So long as we are able to muster funds and so long as we know that needs exist, we shall continue to try to meet those needs. Critical materials are needed in the construction of vital access highways, for improvements to the strategic network, and for other improvement which will help make all phases of our war program effective. One of the major efforts of the association today is directed at the solution of the priorities puzzle. Let me make this clear, however. A priority number nor anything else will not obtain really critical materials unless they are to be used in projects really essential to the war program.

Rubber rationing also affects not only the vehicles that we must use but enters into our construction and maintenance program. Legislation takes on new and greater importance under the war program. The Association is interesting itself in the promotion of legislation that will help solve some of the problems that we face today. It is also interested in presenting to Congress facts and figures which will show the folly of legislation that would damage America’s highway program.

One of the greatest and most important problems that we are facing is that of the post-war period. Nothing matters if we fail to win this war but it would be a sad development if, upon winning it, we should lose the peace that follows by failure to provide adequate, worthwhile, sound projects for a public works program in the post-war period. That such a program will be necessary is almost a foregone conclusion. We must prepare now, with complete plans and drawings, the sound projects which will not only furnish employment but contribute to the economy of our various states and the nation.

During this period of critical emergency, we must be more vigilant than ever against efforts to divert highway revenue to other than highway purposes. We are faced with not only ever-increasing and more critical needs but the very serious prospect of drastic curtailment in our revenues. Any attempt at diversion today would be a stab in the back to the highway industry and to our war effort and the stress which it lays upon adequate transport.

Cooperation Essential

All of these are serious problems. They demand organization. They demand careful thought and study. Above all they demand cooperation. We cannot entirely avoid confusion but we can hold it to a minimum by observing organization lines, by sharing our problems and by sharing the answer which we are able to find to them. That is the major purpose of your American Association of State Highway Officials today. We want to help you, and if we are able to do that, you must help us. The nation has placed a great responsibility upon us, perhaps a greater responsibility than even we are able to realize. If I know engineers, and if I know the road building people of this nation, that’s one part of this war program that will not fail.