The History and Development of Road Building in the United States

Excerpt: At the present rate we are surfacing approximately 40,000 miles a year and our annual expenditure approximates a billion dollars. There is no indication of an early reduction in these rates of construction or expenditure, dwarfed as they are by the annual production of a 1,000-mile procession of motor vehicles and an annual expenditure for operation approaching ten billions. As a nation we have set our hand to the economic improvement of our means of highway transportation. It is not a task to he accomplished in a day. It is, and must be a continuous process. There is but one limit which may reasonably be set. It is this: No road should be improved by expenditures of public funds in excess of its earning capacity. The return to the public in the form of economic transportation is the sole measure and justification of the degree of highway improvement.