OCR Text |
Show according to Mr. Hammond. Under Un-der the federal aid highway act, any state that diverts any of its f?as tax funds or motor vehicle funds loses up to one-third of its federal aid appropriation. This would mean that Utah would lose approximately $600,000 federal aid per year, besides any amount taken from the road fund and diverted di-verted to other purposes. iiifj as well as realignment. It is estimated that it will require not less than $20,000,000 to bring Utah's highways up to the standards stan-dards demanded by modern traffic. traf-fic. Greater headway has been impossible because of lack of funds, and only through the appropriation ap-propriation of Federal aid has It been possible for Utah to make the strides that have been made. Various attempts are being made to divert a part of the revenue reve-nue received from the gasoline tax and motor vehicle taxes for purposes other than road building build-ing and maintenance. Any diversion diver-sion of these funds would be fatal to Utah's road building program, TRAFFIC TRENDS SHOW NEED F0RHIGHWAYS The state road commission has been making a careful study of the six months report of its statewide state-wide highway planning survey, which shows that traffic is increasing in-creasing on all of Utah's main highways. On U. S. highway 91 at Draper cross roads, traffic has increased 25.22 per cent since 1937, while south of Brigham City on U. S. 91 the increase for the same period has been 2 6.98 per cent. Traffic in Parley's canyon has increased 18 per cent in the last three years. In commenting on the survey, W. D. Hammond, chairman of the state road commission, said that the report shows the road commission's com-mission's plans for widening and straightening the through highways high-ways of the state must be carried out as rapidly as possible, and probably enlarged upon If highways high-ways are to keep pace with traffic. All through highways in the state are two-lane roads with the exception of sections recently constructed, con-structed, and those road improvements improve-ments now under construction on through highways call for widen- |