Transport: More Roads

The U. S. motorist rides on some 200.000 miles of hard-surfaced roads, one-fifth of the earth’s total. Nevertheless, last week no less than three plans for another 17,000 miles of U. S. “super highways” were under serious Congressional consideration. In fact, under the pressure of Depression II, the approaching national primaries and the old, old political appetite for pork, these plans were even getting serious consideration at the White House.

Fortnight ago Senator Robert Johns Bulkley of Ohio, facing a primary fight against a hard roads ex-Governor this August, proposed a network of 100 ft. express highways which would avoid towns and cities, shoot directly across and up & down the U. S. There were to be seven North-South routes, three transcontinental. Total cost: $8,000,000,000, to be met in 16 years by tolls and leases of concession privileges along the way. Last week in the House, Alabama’s Representative Henry B. Steagall, more famed for banking than transportation legislation, introduced a companion measure.

But Father of Super Highways in Congress is J. Buell Snyder of Pennsylvania, who two years ago wrote a bill proposing “main streets across the nation” and re-introduced the measure fortnight ago. His was the only super-highway scheme reduced to map form (see map) and consequently the one on which argument focused last week. It calls for payment of $8,000,000,000 from the U. S. Treasury to build $500,000-a-mile, crow-flight highways which would antiquate for express travel most existing routes. Representative Snyder’s scheme would put approximately 1,600,000 men directly to work, says he, and would be a great aid to national defense. (His six North-South arteries stop significantly short of the Canadian border.) His is concrete just heavy enough to stand up under mounted 8-inch guns. And his flowered, shrubbed and lighted super-speedways would be effective aerial guides, could quickly be shut off in sections to provide emergency landing fields. But that is not all. The Snyder plan, which would be carried out by the Department of the Interior, calls for a vast airport at each of the 18 superhighway intersections. Nor does Representative Snyder overlook patronage possibilities. He would have the Government let the job to private contractors in sections no less than 10 miles long. Unlike Senator Bulkley, Congressman Snyder would run his superhighways through large cities, where votes are most plentiful. In fact, two of his superhighways rather obviously jog to make an intersection at Uniontown, Pa., in Mr. Snyder’s home district.

Although last autumn in the interest of economy he came out against the building of public roads, President Roosevelt last week dignified the super-highway idea by endorsing Senator Bulkley’s self-payment plan as a business pump primer, and by suggesting that through excess condemnation of land a mile each side of the superhighways the Government might realize a profit when land values rose.