Evening star., 1939-04-30
Super-Highways
Report May Speed
D. C.-BaItimore Road
26, ,000-MiIe PIon Urges
4-Lune Routes and
Through City Arteries
BY BLAIR BOLLES.

by BLAlH DULLES.
The day when a new four-lane
road with a 4o-foot parkway down
its center will connect Washington
with Baltimore apparently has been
hastened by the Agriculture Depart
ment's master plan for development
of a 26,000-mile superhighway sys-
tenn In the United States.
Congress now is studying the plan
prepared by the Bureau Of Public
Roads-after receiving it from Pres.
ident Roosevelt several days ago.
The fact the plan was drawn ul
in accordance with a congressional
mandate expressed in last years
Highway Act suggests that the
bureaus proposal might soon become
law. The route selected for the roac
to Baltimore-which has not beer
designated in detail-would be 80. ::
miles long and cost $15,516,160. The
cost of the whole national program
is estimated at $2,899, ,770,145, to bt
spread over Is years.
Already projected is by-pas.
through Washington, skirting the
Anacostia and Washington Channe
water fronts and leading to the
Highway Bridge, which would be ar
extension of the superhighway when
the new Baltimore road had been
built. The existing Baltimore road
is the fourth most heavily travelled
stretch in the United States and at
the southern end of the most heavily
travelled major section in the coun-
try-the roadway from here north
to Portland, Me.
District Major Crossroads.
The program, of which the 39-mile
road from here to Baltimore is a
part, aims at establishment of a
primary highway system in the
United States that would be advan-
tageous from the point of view of
satisfying needs of national defense
and Of expanding everyday national
transportation demands. The ten
tative system joins the largest cities
of the country almost without ex-
ception in network of interregional
roads, most of which would roughly
follow existing routes.
In the tentative plan. Washington
is sort of major highway cross
roads. The map accompanying this
article shows routes leading from
here, not only north to Baltimore
and Philadelphia, but southwest to
Roanoke, south to Richmond and
west to Pittsburgh. A part Of the
plan for Washington being consid-
cred by the Bureau of Public Roads
although it is not set forth in the
proposal submitted to Congress-is
development of the bypass around
the northwest corner of the Capital,
leading to Chain Bridge.
Accompanying the suggestions for
vast improvement in the roads from
city to city are concrete proposals
for betterment of city traffic arteries.
Another illustration accompanying
this article, for instance, shows
roughly what Sixteenth street might
look like some day If, as is now
vaguely planned, it becomes part of
the Nations highway system. On
each side would be streets for local
traffic, and in the center, as a de-
pressed roadway, would run a thor
oughfare for through, high-speed
traffic.
Bypass Less Preferable.
This through-city method of car
ing for traffic entering from city-to-
city highways is held up by the
Bureau of Public Roads as prefer
able to the bypass method Of
handling the traffic Most of the
cars entering city from highway,
the bureaus report says, have trav-
eled only short distances. The bu-
reau studied the traffic entering
Washington from the present Balti-
more road and estimated that only
2,269 vehicles of 20,5O0 entering
the Capital from the road "can be
counted as potentially by-passable."
Complete Congestion Soon?
"The remainder of the entering
traffic In each case," the bureau re-
ported, will not only continue into,
but in a large part will penetrate to
the very heart of the city, because
that is where most Of 1t is destined"
That statement brings the bureau
to the consideration of how to i'm
prove traffic conditions In cities, and
it turns to Washington for a good
example.
What has been done in recent
years In the City of Washington in
cutting Constitution avenue and the
new arteries approaching the Union
Station through the former mean
clutter of narrow streets is indica-
tive of the least that somehow
must be done In many Of the larger
and especially in the older cities.
When one observes the count
less impediments that embarrass the
movement of Goth century traffic
through the 18th century streets Of
some Eastern cities one wonders
how long it will be, with the as
sured further increase in traffic, be-
fore complete congestion will result.
Seen Major Unemployment Aid.
Because of their urgent need to
facilitate highway transportation
where it is now most seriously ham,
pered and because of the impetus
that through them may be given to
needed changes in the central plan
of our cities the construction of
trans-city connections Of the main
rural highways and other express
routes into the center of the cities
ranks first in the list of highway
projects worthy of consideration by
the Congress.