The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-01-20
By JOHN A. MACDONALD Conn. Highway Commissioner,

During the calendar year oi 1888, ?72.2O miles of Connecticut state highway and town road were improved by the state highway de- pertinent. This was the largest mileage of road ever to be i'm proved in one year in Connecticut, It exceeds the improved mileage of last year by eighteen miles.
 By far the larger part of this improvement was the gravel sur- facing of local town roads done under the Town Aid Act of 1881 by which $3,000,000 is annually set aside from the highway fund to finance the improvement of town roads. Use of this money on the town roads naturally limits the { fund available for construction and reconstruction of the traffic arter- ies on the trunk lines, state aid and federal aid highway systems as will be seen in the following re- exploitation of the milage of work completed in the various categor- [ ies:
 Town aid, 26s.s7 miles; state aid, 36.01 miles; trunk line, 25.81 miles; federal aid, 41.51 miles.
 The town aid work consisted largely of gravel surfacing, this work accounting for 238.11 miles of the total mileage improved. Other , types oe improvement were made as follows:
 Macadam, 66.72 miles; bitumin- ous macadam, 28.40 miles; rein forced. concrete, 35.44 miles; as- phalt, 1.03 miles; grading, 2.50 miles. Nineteen bridges were also built.
 At the close of the year, we had in progress but unfinished about 129 miles of work. This included the National Recovery projects and the public works administra- 1 tion jobs, none of which will be entirely finished until warmer weather sets in.
 Enactment of the National In- dustrial Recovery Act was the out standing feature of the past year for the highway department, since it made necessary many unantici- pated changes in the operation of the department. From the $400,- 100000 fund established by the MIRA for direct appropriation for highway improvement, Connecticut received $2,865,T40. Plans had to be quickly devised for utilizing this money, so that the state might take full advantage of the recovery measure. The program, set up in accordance with the rules imposed by the MIRA, at first included nine- teen projects. Subsequently,, two of these were eliminated. At present, about 85 per cent of this work is in progress and bids will shortly ', be called on the remainder.
 In order to take advantage of the other funds made available by the MIRA, an arrangement was made with the public works ad- ministration whereby the federal government would pay 30 per cent of the cost of labor and materials lected from a submitted list of thirty-two jobs by the state PWA advisory board. This enabled the highway department to expand its program even more than had been done by the NIRA's outright ap- propriation for highway improve ment. r .,
 The federal grants naturally threw upon the department a great burden of work and for several months made 1t necessary to de- vote almost the entire energies of the highway forces to preparation of plans for their use. This, how ever, was done without neglecting in any detail the work which had been originally planned for the year.
 In october, we began the first traffic survey which has been taken in Connecticut since 1923. This will continue at least through the coming. summer and it will involve a most thorough check on traffic conditions on all of the states pri- mary and secondary highways. Records are being taken at 160 different stations along the high ways as compared with fifty-five stations in the 1893 survey. The data obtained will be of inestim- able value in blaming future high way development. ,
 Among the more important projects completed by the highway department during the year were the following:
 The Willington- -Warrenville road in Ashford and Wilmington (Route No. 74), part of the road between