OCR Text |
Show Majority of Highway Motorists Found to Be Making Less Than Twenty-Mile Trip Highway travel is predominantly a short-distance movement and less than two out of every 100 vehicles observed on main highways are traveling more than 100 miles to reach their destinations. Eight out of ten are traveling less than 20 miles. These are averages of preliminary pre-liminary figures obtained in 11 states in planning surveys being conducted by the bureau of public roads in co-operation with 43 state highway departments. The main highways and their extensions ex-tensions through cities carry 58.9 per cent of the total motor-vehicle traffic; 30.8 per cent is on the large mileage of other city streets and scarcely more than 10 per cent of the total occurs on all secondary and local rural roads which, in mileage, mile-age, have eight times Die extent of the main highways. Preliminary data from IV states show traffic on the main highways and transcity connections to be 5S per cent urban in origin and -52 per cent rural. These are approximate-ly approximate-ly the percentages cf urban and rural population in the states where the counts were made. Ninety-three per cent of the use of city streets, other than through routes, is by urban vehicles, while 84 per cent of the traffic on minor rural roads is by rural vehicles. Data being accumulated in the planning surveys, says the bureau, will give definite indications as to what should be accomplished in further fur-ther road building; as to the relative rela-tive transportation service that may be afforded by improving this or that class of road; as to who will benefit if either is done and who, being be-ing benefited, should pay the cost and in what proportion. The states are still at work collecting collect-ing a mass of statistical facts on highways and preparing the first complete maps of all rural highways. high-ways. Each of the 43 states will publish its own results. |