Essential to the national interest

Public Roads, March-April, 2006 by Richard F. Weingroff

The first decade of the greatest public works project in history began a transportation system yet unrivaled in the world--along with problems to match.

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President Dwight D. Eisenhower understood the value of roads. In 1919 he was aboard the U.S. Army's first transcontinental convoy, a 2-month journey from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, CA, to assess the readiness of military vehicles to make such a long trip and to promote good roads. The trip convinced the participants, which included military personnel, road advocates, and members of the press, of the country's need for better roads. During and after World War II, he traveled on Germany's Reichautobahnen network of rural superhighways, which were studied and envied by American engineers during the prewar 1930s. Eisenhower would say, "The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land."

In 2006 the transportation community celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate System. The second in a three-part series, this article examines the birth of the Interstate System, from the grand ideas to the day-to-day challenges of executing the country's largest public works project.

The Interstate Idea

The concept of the Interstate System was born in two reports to the U.S. Congress, Toll Roads and Free Roads (1939) and Interregional Highways (1944). The reports recommended construction of what the 1939 study called a "system of direct interregional highways, with all necessary connections through and around cities, designed to meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war and the needs of a growing peacetime traffic of longer range."

Congress agreed. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 directed designation of a 65,000-kilometer (40,000-mile) "National System of Interstate Highways" by joint action of State highway agencies, subject to approval by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR). In August 1947, Major General Philip B. Fleming, the Federal Works Administrator, and Commissioner of Public Roads Thomas H. MacDonald announced designation of 60,642 kilometers (37,681 miles) of principal highways, including 4,638 kilometers (2,882 miles) of urban thoroughfares carrying the main line through cities. The remaining 3,732 kilometers (2,319 miles) of the authorized mileage were reserved for circumferential and distributing routes. This process was completed when BPR released the publication General Location of National System of Interstate Highways Including All Additional Routes at Urban Areas Designated in September 1955 (known as the "Yellow Book" because of the cover's color).

What was missing was a program to fund and build the Interstate System.

The "Grand Plan"

President Eisenhower's Grand Plan is sometimes misunderstood as simply recommending construction of the Interstate System. His vision was far grander than that.

The President intended to present the plan to the Governors' Conference meeting in upstate New York in July 1954. However, following the death of his sister-in-law, Eisenhower was unable to attend. Instead, he provided notes to Vice President Richard M. Nixon for delivery to the Governors.

The Grand Plan, Nixon explained, was that each level of Government--Federal, State, county, and municipal--would contribute to upgrading the Nation's entire road network over a 10-year period. The goal was "a properly articulated system that solves the problems of speedy, safe, transcontinental travel." The benefits would be improved safety, reduced traffic jams, less traffic-related litigation, increased economic efficiency, and elimination of "the appalling inadequacies to meet the demands of catastrophe or defense should an atomic war come."

Finally, the Grand Plan included "very probably, a program initiated by the Federal Government, with State cooperation, for the planning and construction of a modern State highway system ... to construct new, or modernize existing, highways." That was as close as Eisenhower came to mentioning the Interstate System in his Grand Plan speech.

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Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956

The President asked his friend and adviser General Lucius D. Clay to head a committee to develop a Federal response to the challenge. The resulting Clay Committee believed the Interstate System would cost $27 billion, with $23 billion of that for rural segments. In February 1955, Eisenhower submitted the committee's report to Congress along with legislative proposals. The Clay plan--which entailed $25 billion in bonds and redirection of the gas tax--was a flop.

As Congress searched for an alternative financing plan in 1955, the highway-related interests that supported the Interstate System agreed on only one thing--they did not want to pay for it. Why, they asked, should only users pay for a highway network that would benefit the entire country? In July 1955, the Congress adjourned without completing action, mainly because of disagreement over financing.