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Show Better Farm Travel Promised in Huge Federal-State Postwar Road Program Cooperation of Local Agencies Needed to Assure Share in Projects. By WALTER SIIEAD WNU Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C Township trustees and highway supervisors, county highway superintendents, boards of county coun-ty commissioners and other officials of local governmental units interested in secondary and feeder road construction and improvement have an unprecedented opportunity to take advantage of the largest grant-in-aid of federal funds in the history of the Public Roads administration. This grant of federal aid for highway and road construction, construc-tion, to be matched by the states on a 50-50 basis, totals $1 ,500,-000,000 ,500,-000,000 and provides for a $500,000,000 expenditure of federal funds annually for the first three postwar fiscal years. That means, if the several states take advantage of all the funds, an expenditure of three billion dollars on highways willt be made in the three-year period. This expenditure is to be divided $225,000,000 annually for the regular federal aid highways; $125,000,000 annually for urban projects on the federal aid highway system and $150,000,000 for secondary and feeder feed-er roads. And it is this latter appropriation with which we are particularly concerned, con-cerned, for If all subdivisions of the state governments take advantage of this congressional appropriation for the three-year period it will mean an expenditure of $300,000,000 on these all-important farm-to-market roads which constitute 88.8 per cent of all our public highway mileage. mile-age. The importance of participation by local governmental officials is pointed out for the reason that in most of the states it will be necessary neces-sary to enact enabling legislation in order that local road officials and state highway departments may get together on a comprehensive plan which will take in these farm-to-market roads. The federal bureau of public roads deals only with state highway departments, de-partments, so the cooperation of state and local highway departments is essential if this money is to go to local road construction. Legislatures Meet. In every state in the union with the exception of Kentucky. Louisiana, Louisi-ana, Mississippi and Virginia the state legislatures are, or have been, In session this year. The chances are that where necessary this enabling en-abling legislation is already before Die state legislatures. In some states, for instance in North Carolina. West Virginia. Vir-ginia, Vir-ginia, Delaware and Maryland, all county roads have been taken over by the state highway departments. In other states, such as the New England states, there is a working agreement that the state highway departments build the county roads. The point is, however, that this is not a paternalistic gift to the local communities; the federal aid is extended ex-tended on the basis of need and the extent of the cooperation between local road officials and their state highway departments. In a good many states a system of secondary roads has never been designated by the state highway departments, and this designation is one of the requirements so that the money spent can be under the supervision super-vision of the highway departments of the states. Insofar as the farm-to-market roads are concerned the $450,000,000 of federal funds for the three-year period will be apportioned to the states, one-third on the basis of area, one-third on the basis of rural population, and one-third on the basis of rural post road mileage. The importance of the development develop-ment of these secondary and feeder feed-er roads to the basic economy of the rural districts of the nation is immediately seen when it is pointed out that there are 2.936.000 miles of these roads and only about 3 per cent of that mileage is paved, About 38 per cent is surfaced with such material as topsoil, shale, untreated un-treated gravel and crushed rock and the remaining 57 per cent has no surfacing of any kind. In" other words the millions of farmers living liv-ing on this 57 per cent of the mileage mile-age of farm-to-market roads are still in the mud. Benefits Widespread. While there are no clearly defined de-fined boundaries of the areas of population groups especially served by any one of the three classes of roads, that Is federal-aid highways, urban roads and streets and the farm-Uvmarket roads, all areas and all populations derive some benefit from the three groups of highways. It is apparent, however, that people living outside of any municipality munici-pality and people living in munlcl-palitics munlcl-palitics of less than 10.000 population popula-tion are especlaly Interested In these BeforiaMll EJtllill W SjeSTI MSJUIUL ussWSMSMSMSSSSSSMSMSBSSSMi f-'v- ''-its Jll,i. ,( , ,1 After ! ' Before l&C&MVS i C f ! sr After? - Widened, drained and graded, these county feeder roads in Maryland Mary-land are now providing farmers with faster and smoother service to marketing centers. farm-to-market or secondary roads. And here are some population figures fig-ures on that basis. There are approximately ap-proximately 21,000,000 people living in towns of less than 10,000 and about 48.000,000 people, mostly farmers, farm-ers, living outside of municipalities or a total of 69,000.000 people. So that 52.4 per cent of the total population popu-lation of the country are in areas where the secondary and feeder roads are located and would receive a large measure of benefit from their improvement. But to be more specific, 44,000,000 people live on these secondary roads and they constitute the lifeline life-line for 92 per cent of the 6,100,000 farms in the nation. Travel studies for the year 1941 showed that of the total of 310.800,000,000 vehicle miles traveled in the United States, 107.-180,000.000 107.-180,000.000 was on the farm-to-mar-ket roads, or 34.3 per cent of the total vehicle miles traveled. Of course the funds to be available avail-able for the improvement of these secondary roads are not expected to Improve all of them and it is the responsibility of local road officials and the state highway departments to determine what proportion can best be improved to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Funds Limited. According to estimates which have been received from many states it is doubtful that funds provided pro-vided in the three-year period will provide Improvement for as much as one-third of the entire secondary road system. And it is likely that thousands of miles of these secondary second-ary roads will never be improved. For instance. F. R. White, chief engineer of the Iowa State highway system, in testifying before the house of representatives road committee, com-mittee, said that studies in his state indicated that Improvement of about 83 per cent of the rural secondary sec-ondary road mileage would provide a surfaced road to each farmhouse in the state. "A goodly portion of the remaining re-maining 17 per cent of the mileage is so little used as to be nothing more than land-use trails, which could well be abandoned as public highways and the land turned back to corn production." Mr. White said. In some states the need is much greater than In others, as was evidenced evi-denced In some of the testimony before be-fore this committee. In Indiana, for Instance, a large per cent of rural roads have some sort of surfacing sur-facing like bituminous, crushed rock or gravel, while in Alabama the testimony showed that some 60.000 miles of the country road system la " 'V Fifty-seven per - cent of America'! -W r 7 ast network of . VA rural secondary " ' Y ro, renaln on- -W aurfaced, with the CiL v o .reuU ,n1 m"' . vO'JV O farmers still find , " v nmaelva fre- rl qorntly Block la .- V" plclurt Indicates. u largely without permanent surfacing and varies greatly with the different differ-ent counties. While cost of these farm-to-market roads varies in different sections of the country, indications are that the county and township officials want as much mileage surfaced as possible from the funds available at costs running from approximately $3,500 to $6,000 per mile. Intermediate Interme-diate types of surfacing would run upward to approximately $12,000 per mile with the higher type pavements pave-ments costing upwards of $20,000 per mile. State Funds Available. Due to the fact that there has been little road building during the war, state highway construction funds have swelled into fantastic proportions propor-tions despite the fact that revenues reve-nues from automobile licenses and gasoline taxes have been reduced due to curtailment in auto travel. The Public Roads administration estimates that unexpended balances in state road funds by the end of this year will total around $418,000.-000. $418,000.-000. To this will be added current receipts from levies upon the auto owner so that the PRA estimates the states will have approximately $475,000,000 to $500,000,000 available for new highway construction. If they match the authorized appropriation appropri-ation as set up in the new federal aid highway act their total must reach at least $500,000,000 annually. Of the federal funds, $100,000,000 is already available for surveys, plans and construction, but the remainder of the program must wait until the first postwar fiscal year which ends June 30 following proclamation proc-lamation by the President of the end of the existing emergency, or . concurrent resolution by the con gress that emergency has been sufficiently suf-ficiently eased to permit high-way high-way work. It is pointed out that there have been federal aid appropriations for secondary and feeder roads In the past, but unfortunately there has never been full and complete advantage ad-vantage taken of the money appropriated, appro-priated, and, as a result, in a number num-ber of states the intent of the appropriation ap-propriation has not been fully realized. For this reason, federal of-ficials of-ficials along with those interested in road construction, both public and in private industry, stress the importance impor-tance of close cooperation between local and state officials in selecting a secondary road system which will qualify with the PRA, care being exercised ex-ercised not to include roads of minor importance. Some important features of the 1944 act include costs of rights-of-way in construction costs provided the federal share shall not exceed one-third; 10 per cent of toti authorization may be used unmatched un-matched by the states for elimination elimina-tion of hazards in highway rail grade crossings with the government govern-ment paying 90 per cent and the railroads rail-roads 10 per cent of the cost; IV per cent of the total authorization may be used for long-range highway- plans. Federal Share. According to officials of the American Association of State Highway High-way officials, the states feel that the federal government has an obli-gation obli-gation in making these grants for use by the states in highway con-struction. con-struction. They also feel that the federal government should pay a higher percentage of the costs than the "50-50" basis wJRch Is now and has been in effect Samuel C. Hadden of Indiana, president of the American association, associ-ation, pointed this out in his testimony testi-mony before the house committee He said that in 1942. for instance, the federal government collected taxes on motor vehicles and parts and on motor fuels in excess of $677,000,000, while in the same year it returned to the states in the form of federal highway aid less than one-fourth of that amount "For some years," Mr. Hadden aid, "it has been the declared policy of the federal government that the state governments should not practice diversion of motor ve-! hlcle tax revenues from highway to other purposes. "This disparity between precept and example has not escaped the attention at-tention of our citizens generally, or of our state and local public officials. Frankly, it is the belief of the great majority of our citizens that the federal fed-eral government should take its own prescription in this matter, especlolly since the precept Is considered con-sidered sound and the example unsound." un-sound." As a matter of fact. 14 states have within recent years amended their constitutions to prohibit diversion diver-sion of taxes collected from gasoline gaso-line and automobile licenses to other than highway construction and maintenance. At any rate. If local and state officials of-ficials cooperate properly there Is a good chance that during the three years following the war several millions of our farmers will "get out of the mud" through the medium of the availability of these federal funds. These farm-to-market roads are our "bread and butter" roads; they carry our food to market; they carry the country children to achool and back home again In the evening; eve-ning; they carry the mall to a third of our population; they carry this third to and from their churches, and they reach Into remote comers. |