Evening star., 1939-12-12
BY BLAIR MOODY.

ways, will be asked within the next
few weeks to chart and implement
scheme to spend at least $50,000,-
100000 in the next 20 years on an
integrated master plan" for the
United States.
But don't scream yet-the plan
does not involve any increase in
taxes, nor any spending more than
will be spent anyway if our current
ox-cart system of spreading con-
crete here and there on rural hills
and valleys rumbles right along
without change.
And only small proportion of
the money-just enough to give i'm
petus and guidance to the program
will come from the Federal Treas
ury. The rest will roll in from
gasoline, license and other state i'm
posts at their present rates, and
such bond issues as States and local
communities may float to win their
share of Uncle Sans ante.
In its main features, the scheme
will be local The idea of it's Spon-
sors, who include not only President
Roosevelt and the Federal Roads
Bureau under Commissioner Thom-
as H. Mcdonald. but also some of
the Nations leading manufacturers
and businessmen, is that projects be
locally instituted, locally built and,
in the main, locally paid for.
Traffic Problem National.
But, in the opinion of these same
sponsors, the traffic problem has
taken on national aspects-of great
economic loss through congestion
and destruction of property values,
of national defense, of safety. These
factors, they contend. concern the
Nation as whole and none but the
Federal Government is equipped to
handle certain aspects.
Most of all, the expenditure of
road money, now estimated at about
$2000,000,000 year, needs plan
ming. 1t needs it now, and, as Pyke
johnson, general manager of the
Automobile Manufacturers Associa-
ton, declares, it will need it much
more in the future.
For all estimates indicate that,
by 1860, there will be many more
cars on the road than there are
now. and, in the aggregate, that
they will travel twice as far. So if
every city in the country is plagued
by rush-hour jams and bottlenecks
now, failure to pave the way for
Intelligent expansion of traffic PROM
ises an unbearable situation then
The movement which has resulted
IN the first major attempt to knit
together an integrated highway pro-
gram sprang from an idea that
proved utterly unsound. Someone
thought it would be a great idea to
build six great transcontinental toll
roads, three spanning the country
from east to west, three banding
it from north to south. These, it
was suggested, would solve the worst
of our traffic difficulties and pay
for themselves by their own income.
But a study of months by road
bureau experts. implemented by 46
separate State surveys, made it very
clear that such highways would not
and could not pay for themselves.
They would repel rather than stim-
ulate travel. And, above all, they
would scarcely Craze the edge of our
real traffic difficulties.
But Mr.. McDonald's report on
transcontinental highways, while
vigorously adverse, was far from
wasted effort. For, to get the dope
he needed, he studied the basic facts
about travel-habits, the difficulties
dangers and desires of the auto
driving public.
What he found was that there is
no habit of transcontinental travel,
that less than 4 per cent of all one
way passenger car trips extending
outside of cities are longer than SO
miles. Traffic is local.
He found that, by and large, our
road program of the last 20 years
has pulled the country out of the
mud, but has not kept pace with
growing use of cars, nor has it
placed emphasis in the spots where
emphasis is now needed.
He found that traffic not only
moves in mass into cities rather
than through or beyond them; but
1t moves into and away from the
centers of cities-and that there is
not city in the country that has
adequately met the problem of rush.
hour transportation.
He found that 78 per cent of the
country's road mileage serves only
10 per cent of the travel; while less
than l per cent of rural mileage can
be made to serve more than 125
per cent.
The Conclusions.
The facts made these conclusions
inescapable:
l. Our No. traffic problem is in
the cities, and it is sadly neglected
Major thoroughfares were built for
q maximum of Is or at the most
3O-mile- hour vehicles; they are
narrow, subject to heavy cross
traffic delays. And Mr.. Mcdonald
comes to the conclusion:
CONSTRUCTION of trans-city con-
nections 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 Congress"
2. There should be established
developed and improved, through
the cooperation of Congress, the
Public Roads Bureau, the War De-
partment and State agencies, a pri'
mary highway system covering ma
jor lines of interregional travel In
the country.
On this point, Mr.. Mcdonald as
serts: by providing ample capacity
and every safety device known to
modern highway engineering, the
construction of these roads would
affect a greater reduction in the
highway accident rate than could
be made by an equivalent sum spent
for highways in any other way"
3. Rural roads should be improved
There are 1000 miles of roads built
prior to 1921-14 per cent of the