**Net truck registrations at the end of each year are total registrations in the following year, less new registrations also in the following year; data for 1951 are estimated. SOURCE: Office of Business Economics, U. S. Department of Commerce 3,000 2,000 1,500 1,000 400 1 Sources: Net truck registrations based on total registration estimates of the Bureau of Public Roads, U. S. Department of Commerce, and new registrations estimates of R. L. Polk & Co. Based on the following regression equation: Log trucks=2.43+95 log time (1915-12=0); r=0.998. Trend fitted to data for period 1917-29. Source: Office of Business Economics, U. S. Department of Commerce. No statistics on miles of travel, motor-vehicle registrations, or traffic densities can, of course, adequately portray the magnitude of the modernization work which this expanded use calls for by way of added lanes, widening of bridges, and elimination of curves. Owen and Dearing, of the Brookings Institution, point out the basic and pervasive character of the Nation-wide highway-development problem today in these words: We have now entered a new era of highway development. This stage in the physical development of the highway system is characterized by technical standards and capital requirements that make previous concepts totally inadequate. Highway administrators are confronted with a situation analogous to that of an entire industry being overtaken by functional obsolescence. Survival depends on modernization; but in order to modernize, the old tools must be replaced and the entire plant redesigned.19 The full extent of the additional deterioration and obsolescence since the 1949 estimate is not available, but it seems fair to assume that in the aggregate the backlog is at least as high as set forth in the 1949 estimates. This assumption is based on the fact that the cost of correcting the additional highway deficiencies brought about by the increased traffic load is at least as large as the deficiencies that have been corrected by construction work accomplished during the past 3 years. The brokerage letter previously referred to, citing authorities dealing with only a part of our highway system, pointed out how the backlog has risen: * According to the American Association of State Highway officials, the Federal-aid highway system alone needed more than $32 billion worth of high19 Owen, Wilfred, and Dearing, Charles L., Toll Roads and the Problem of Highway Modernization (the Brookings Institution, 1951), p. 23. way construction for current needs as of the first of 1952. This was an increase of $3 billion over a similar estimate made 2 years earlier despite $3 billion of construction since the previous estimate. To evaluate this amount even more clearly, it is worth pointing out that it is some $7 billion greater than the total expenditures for all business plant and equipment estimated for the record year of 1952. 20 After allowing for the increased maintenance expenditures and the growing obsolescence of a large part of the system, authorities estimate that for a 10-year period maintenance and reconstruction necessary to modernize existing roads and maintain the present system in satisfactory condition will take more than $7 billion per year against the estimate of some $5.5 billion made only a few years ago. By way of comparison the previously mentioned testimony before the House subcommittee indicated that actual 1951 expenditures totaled approximately $4.2 billion or slightly more than half the annual expenditure estimated as necessary for the adequate rehabilitation and maintenance of the Nation's highway system during the next 10 years. Out of the 1951 expenditures, little more than half-only $2.7 billion-was expended for construction and rehabilitation as distinct from current maintenance. Lest these figures seem unduly high when measured against what the Nation has been willing and able to do in the past, chart 13 showing highway-construction expenditures adjusted to show constant dollars since 1920, is well worthy of examination. While dollar costs themselves, expressed by the level of current expenditures and the estimates of future needs, seem far greater than anything we have heretofore experienced, construction volume of recent years in "real" terms is not greatly different than that of the higher predepression years. Meanwhile the country has grown steadily in population and in national income. No appreciation of the cost of modernizing present highway systems is complete without some mention of the costs and the effects on the economy of neglecting the rehabilitation work. As pointed out in the report, Highways and the Nation's Economy, the highway user pays for the privilege of driving on inadequate highway systems in time, money, physical effort, and mental effort. It costs the operator of the average passenger vehicle 1 or 2 minutes more of his time when he travels a mile on a congested city street than if he traveled that mile on an adequate urban facility. The operators of passenger cars on secondary rural roads pay at least 1 cent in additional operating costs for the questionable privilege of driving their cars a mile over dusty gravel roads rather than over a bituminous-surfaced road. The operators of the large trucks, of course, pay proportionately larger sums for the privilege of using the present inadequate highways rather than the improved roads that would exist if the highway systems of the Nation were rehabilitated. This added cost of transporting the Nation's goods is, of course, passed on to the ultimate consumer of the products being transported. The people of the Nation are, therefore, paying in many different ways for not having an adequate highway-transportation system. 20 Harvey Firestone, Jr., of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., in a statement in the Wall Street Journal for May 19, 1952, cites competent authorities as estimating that "it will take five to seven billion dollars a year for the next 15 years to build essential roads, to modernize existing highways, and to maintain our present system in satisfactory condition." |