May/June 2006 · Vol. 69 · No. 6
May/June 2006
The Battle of Its Life
by Richard F. Weingroff
Even as construction continued at a record
pace, the Interstate System needed a rescuer-and found one in Rex Whitton of Missouri.
|
In December 1962, Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton challenged the American Association of State Highway Officials to finish half the Interstate System by the midway point in the program, which was then expected to end in 1972. This exhibit was created to illustrate the challenge. |
On
November 8, 1960, Senator
John F. Kennedy (D—MA) defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the
presidential election.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his successor were from different generations and political parties, but
Kennedy-the first President born in the 20th century-shared
Eisenhower's concern about the future of the National System of Interstate and
Defense Highways.
In 2006 the transportation community
celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate System.
The third in a three-part series, this article examines the birth of the
Interstate System, from the grand ideas to the day-to-day challenges of
executing the country's largest public works project.
Challenges for the New Administration
Several
problems confronted policymakers. Even as construction moved at a record pace,
a looming fiscal crisis threatened to derail the schedule, if not the program.
According to the 1961 Interstate Cost Estimate (ICE), Congress would have to provide an additional $11 billion to maintain the
schedule. Controversy dogged construction in urban areas. The press repeated
tales of alleged corruption and bungling that had given the program the
disparaging label "our great big highway bungle."
|
Amid calls for an end to the problem-plagued Interstate program, Rex M. Whitton (shown here) became the third Federal Highway Administrator on February 10, 1961. |
President Kennedy would have to address these issues before calls to end the Interstate program grew too loud to ignore. He selected Governor Luther H. Hodges of North Carolina to be Secretary of Commerce. Within that agency, the new Federal Highway Administrator of the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) would be Rex Whitton.
Whitton's career with the Missouri State highway agency had begun in 1920 when he accepted a job operating a level on a survey crew for $110 a month, plus field expenses. He became chief engineer in 1951, leading to his role as president of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), as it was called then, in 1956. Whitton represented AASHO before Congress during this critical year and oversaw revision of the 1945 geometric design standards for the Interstate System. The new edition was approved in July 1956 and quickly adopted by BPR. Whitton also had ensured in August that Missouri would have the first project to go to contract after President Eisenhower approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
|
|
To illustrate the magnitude of the "greatest public works project in history," BPR prepared these illustrations in 1961 showing how much concrete, right-of-way, and reinforcing steel would be needed. |
Whitton's
first speech as Federal Highway Administrator was to a meeting of the American
Road Builders Association (ARBA) in Atlantic
City, NJ, in March 1961. The Interstate System,
he said, "can and must be completed by 1972" as scheduled. He saw three
challenges. The first was the funding problem, and the second was the "scandals" that were undermining public support. The third was "public apathy, or at least
a lack of full appreciation of the urgent need for the highway program and the
benefits it is bringing." Increased public education was essential in the face
of the negative publicity, he said. "There is no instant panacea for the
trouble besetting the highway program," but he promised to "give the job
everything I have."
The Funding Problem
The funding problem would be addressed
promptly. In February 1961, President Kennedy wrote to Congress, "Our Federal
pay-as-you-go highway program is in peril." He justified the special message by
citing the "vital contribution" of the program to security, safety, and
economic growth, as well as national defense. He opposed "stretching out or
cutting back" the program, two options that critics had suggested.
He explained that in 1959 President Eisenhower had signed legislation increasing the gas tax to 4 cents per gallon as a temporary measure that would expire July 1, returning the tax to 3 cents. The reduction, President Kennedy wrote, "was
vigorously opposed by the previous administration. It is opposed by this
administration with equal vigor." Overall, he recommended tax changes that
would add $9.7 billion over roughly a 10-year period, or about $900 million per
year, for the Interstate program.
The President also addressed urban development issues. He wrote that he had directed Commerce Secretary Hodges and Housing and Home Finance Administrator Robert C. Weaver "to increase their joint planning at every level, to improve coordination of urban renewal and freeway construction plans in the same area, and to invite the cooperative efforts of State and local highway and housing officials and private experts." In addition, Kennedy encouraged legislation to help families displaced by highway construction to find "reasonable housing at reasonable costs"-a problem that "has been largely overlooked," he wrote.
Congress
acted quickly. On June
29, exactly 5 years after President Eisenhower had approved the 1956 law, President
Kennedy approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1961 with, he said, "the greatest pleasure." The new law made the 4-cent gas tax
permanent and adjusted other excise taxes to support completion of the
Interstate System on the basis of the latest ICE. It also adjusted remaining
authorizations for the system to a total of $25.2 billion over 9 years. With
State matching funds, the legislation accounted for $27 billion in funding for
the remainder of the program through fiscal year (FY) 1971, the same amount
Congress had thought in 1956 would be the total cost of the program.
After Kennedy's signing of the 1961 act, completion of the Interstate System was never again in doubt.
Construction accelerated throughout the early 1960s. By the end of 1962, 23,023 kilometers (14,300 miles) of the Interstate System had been opened. A year later, 26,726 kilometers (16,600 miles) were open.
President
Kennedy gave Whitton one of the pens used to sign the legislation. "It is not
an expensive pen," Whitton would recall, "but it is the most important one I
ever owned, for it was an instrument of writing a solution to the highway
financing crisis which has bothered so many of us for several years."
Getting the Message Out
In April 1961, President Kennedy issued a proclamation declaring that the week of May 21-27 would be National Highway Week. It was an opportunity for Federal and State highway officials, and the Nation's
Governors, to remind the public of the "vital role of highway transportation in
our way of life."
Whitton
began a public relations initiative to counter the bad press the Interstate
program was receiving. The campaign included his appearance at highway openings
around the country, each an opportunity to gain positive publicity in local
newspapers. By the time he left office in December 1966,
Whitton had attended more Interstate openings than any Federal Highway
Administrator before or since.
As
he traveled the country, Whitton continued to meet with the press to share his
optimism about the future awaiting the country in the early 1970s when the
Interstate System would be completed. Typical was an article he wrote that
appeared in Sunday newspapers around the country for the Commerce Sunday Feature Service in
August 1964, which ended, "Today, wherever we look throughout our country, we
find that the Interstate System is spurring new industrial and commercial
development, creating new jobs, and generating new economic growth for the
benefit of all Americans."
The Great Highway Robbery
These efforts coincided with continued
negative press coverage. For example, the investigative journalist Jack Anderson wrote about "The Great Highway Robbery" in the February 4, 1962, issue of Parade magazine. He quoted Representative John A. Blatnik (D-MN), who headed the Special Subcommittee on the Federal-Aid Highway Program, as saying, "Corruption permeates the highway program and stigmatizes the whole road-building industry." The committee's counsel, Walter May, suggested throwing a dart at a U.S.
map. "Wherever it sticks, we can find
something wrong with the new highways."
The
coverage usually cited examples of graft, payola, abuse of right-of-way appraisals, and poor judgment brought to the attention of the Blatnik Committee, often involving a small number of States.
In
response, BPR strengthened program controls. In July 1962, it established an Office of Right-of-Way and
Location, to be headed by longtime employee Edgar H. Swick. The new office would be responsible for route location and ensuring that
right-of-way would be acquired properly and at fair cost. In addition, former FBI agent Joseph M. O'Connor would direct a new Office of Audit and Investigations, which would probe allegations of fraud, land speculation, collusion, and other
irregularities, as well as audit State claims for reimbursement of the Federal share of project costs.
At the same time, BPR was cooperating fully with the Blatnik Committee, the FBI, General Accounting Office, and State investigative units. Beginning in May 1961, the committee issued reports on its findings. The reports covered such topics as highway construction practices in two States, right-of-way acquisition in a third State, and the relationship between road contractors and State personnel as well as disposition of right-of-way improvements in another State.
In June 1962, Chairman Blatnik summarized his committee's findings in a speech to the Western Association of State Highway Officials. "The areas in which we have found...faults are only a small fraction of the total
of this great program," he said. He warned the highway officials not to
overrate "the unjustified conclusions and editorials in the newspapers."
Instead, they should note congressional support for the program, especially in
comparison with the attitude in 1959 when "wild speeches" were being made in
the House about "extravagance, inefficiency, waste, graft, and so forth." Now,
he said, lawmakers knew that any incidents they heard about from constituents
would be investigated and resolved.
The Blatnik Committee, combined with policing efforts by BPR, the State highway
agencies, and investigative agencies, defused the crisis. The allegations would
resurface in later critical articles and books, but the danger to the program
was over.
The President's Message on Transportation
In March 1962, Commerce Secretary Hodges and Housing and Home Finance Administrator Weaver reported to the President on redressing urban transportation problems. The major objectives, they said, "are the achievement of sound land-use patterns,
the assurance of transportation facilities for all segments of the population,
the improvement in overall traffic flow, and the meeting of total urban
transportation needs at minimum cost."
Their
report recommended that beginning July 1, 1965, approval of Federal-aid highway
projects in any metropolitan area should be contingent on a finding by the
Commerce Secretary that the projects "are consistent with adequate,
comprehensive development plans for the metropolitan area or are based on
results of a continuing process carried on cooperatively by the States and
local communities" so that the Federal-aid system "will be an integral part of
a soundly based, balanced transportation system for the area involved."
With
mass transit increasingly operated by public agencies rather than the
for-profit companies that had dominated the field in the 1950s, the report
continued, Federal funding to subsidize needed service was vitally needed.
"Mass transportation must be viewed as a public service and often cannot be a
profit-making enterprise," it said.
|
To illustrate the magnitude of the "greatest public works project in history," BPR prepared these illustrations in 1961 showing how much concrete, right-of-way, and reinforcing steel would be needed. |
In April, President Kennedy submitted a message to Congress on "The Transportation
System of our Nation." The message covered a wide range of topics, including freight shipments
by land, air, and water; international aviation and maritime issues; and labor
relations related to transportation workers. The message began: "An efficient
and dynamic transportation system is vital to our domestic economic growth,
productivity, and progress. Affecting the cost of every commodity we consume or
export, it is equally vital to our ability to compete abroad. It influences
both the cost and the flexibility of our defense preparedness, and both the
business and recreational opportunities of our citizens."
President
Kennedy recommended that Congress establish a long-term program of Federal aid to urban mass transportation ($500 million over 3 years)
in the form of direct grants to public agencies for rights-of-way, fixed
facilities such as maintenance sites and terminals, rolling stock (subway
cars), extension and rehabilitation of existing systems, and creation of new
systems.
Because
highways would remain an "instrumental part" of urban transportation, the President asked for changes in U.S. Department of Commerce policy and Federal law to bring urban Federal-aid highway construction more in line with the comprehensive development plans for metropolitan areas. In addition, he cited Secretary Hodges's estimate that 15,000 families and 1,500 businesses were being displaced by Interstate construction each year. With Federal urban renewal programs as a model, President Kennedy submitted legislation "to authorize payments not to exceed $200 in the case of individuals and families and $3,000...in the case of business concerns or nonprofit organizations displaced as a result of land acquisitions under these programs."
Addressing the Urban Crisis
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which President Kennedy signed on October 23, completed action on the highway
portion of his transportation message.
Section
5 addressed the growing concern, cited by the President and by a number of
critical articles, about relocated individuals and businesses. Before approving
a project, the Commerce Secretary would have to be assured that the State
highway agency would provide advisory assistance for displaced families. He
also was required to approve Federal-aid participation in relocation payments
by the State to displaced residents and businesses. The dollar limits proposed
by the President were adopted.
The most important provision was Section 9, "Transportation Planning in Certain Urban Areas." It addressed the
President's call for a means of ensuring that Federal-aid highway and mass transportation programs would be part of a comprehensive and balanced urban transportation plan. Section 9 of the 1962 Act added Section 134 to Title 23, United States Code, which launched modern transportation planning by calling for "a continuing comprehensive transportation planning process carried on cooperatively."
What became known as the "3C" process remains the core of Section 134, which
now contains nearly 20 subsections.
To
address the new planning requirements, State and urban officials formed ad hoc planning committees to reflect the "cooperative" element of the 3C process and hired consultants to gather and process data. Neither Section 9 nor the BPR's instructional memorandum on implementing it required formation of a permanent planning organization; however, the metropolitan planning organizations of today, required by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973, would evolve from these early efforts to comply with the 3C requirement.
|
Rex Whitton participated in more opening ceremonies for Interstate highways than any other Federal Highway Administrator. Here he is shown marking the opening of Virginia's portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) on April 2, 1964. |
A Challenge to AASHO
When AASHO gathered in December 1962 for its annual meeting, Whitton included a challenge for State highway officials in
his annual speech. Given the continuing criticism of the Interstate program,
Whitton pointed out that "nothing succeeds like success." Each Interstate
highway, he said, "is its own best advertisement" of the benefits of freeways.
Building the Interstates as fast as possible "is the best means we have to
combat the carping critics and mudslingers."
With the Interstate program funded through FY 1971, the halfway point was 1964 for the 15-year program. Therefore, Whitton challenged State highway officials to complete 50 percent of the Interstate System, or 32,200 kilometers (20,000 miles), by the end of 1964. He urged the States to focus on projects that would link longer route sections, especially those connecting
large cities. Such routes, he said, "best demonstrate to the public the benefits of the system-time saving, travel ease, and safety."
The Quiet Crisis
With this challenge before them, State highway agencies continued construction at a fast pace. But even as the new
highways became an integral part of the American way of life, the image of the
Interstate System suffered. The ideas that informed the decade-such as
stewardship of the environment, guarantee of civil rights, expansion of the
role of women, and the questioning of authority-meant that no amount of public
relations and optimistic predictions about highways without stoplights could
overcome the negative image the Interstate System had received in its first
years.
A
turning point came in September 1962 with the publication of a book, Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring, which had nothing to do with the Interstate
System. Silent Spring, which described the effect of chemicals such as
DDT on the environment, was an immediate international bestseller and made the environment a major national concern. After Silent Spring, the public began to see the relationship between human endeavors that, however
well intended, had adversely affected the environment. This "quiet crisis," as
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall called it in 1963, would require a "new
conservationist" in the form of ecologists, botanists, and biologists.
The quiet crisis would soon become another concern that highway engineers had not
anticipated. For BPR and the States, the location of highways had not involved
concerns about the environment. Rather, road builders sought the best routing
to provide traffic service at the lowest cost with the least disruption to
homes and businesses. Now, new criteria would have to be considered. Less than
a year after Silent Spring's publication, BPR announced in August 1963
that beginning January 1, 1964, the States would be required to certify, for each
Federal-aid highway project, that they had considered its possible effects on
fish and wildlife. Discussing this change, Whitton said, "We do not seek to
despoil the countryside." He added that "our responsibility...is to spend the
highway user's dollar wisely," but the new environmental emphasis demonstrated
that "we do not have closed or calloused minds."
Although
Whitton would present the new requirement as a "conservation" measure, it was
one of many steps the highway engineers would take-willingly in some cases, not
so willingly in others-in the wake of Silent Spring to adjust to an
evolving public awareness that meeting transportation needs had environmental
consequences that should be considered along with congestion relief, economic
development, safety, and other traditional factors.
|
Representative John A. Blatnik was appointed to head a Special Subcommittee on the Federal-Aid Highway Program in September 1959. He came to the post expecting to find widespread corruption, but came to believe any problems were largely isolated. Representative Blatnik, second from right, is shown here on September 14, 1971, cutting the ribbon to rename the I-535 Duluth-Superior Bridge the "John A. Blatnik Bridge." |
President John F. Kennedy
In October
1963, President Kennedy approved the Federal-Aid Highway Amendments Act of 1963, a technical corrections bill that contained an
important change in the design of Interstate projects. The 1956 law had called
for Interstate projects to be designed to meet traffic demand in 1975. As that
year came closer, Federal and State highway officials and
key Members of Congress began to worry about construction of
highways that would soon be obsolete. Therefore, the 1963 act required design
for a 20-year period commencing on the date of plan approval. (The Federal-Aid
Highway Act of 1966 made another key change in design standards by
requiring that "such standards shall in all cases provide for at least four
lanes of traffic.")
A few weeks later, on November 14, 1963, President Kennedy helped open the Maryland
Northeastern Expressway and the Delaware Turnpike (I-95), which were separate State toll roads that
met at the State line. More than 10,000 people attended the ceremony, staged at
the State line, for what would prove to be the only time a President has
participated in an Interstate opening. The President said of the new turnpike:
"It symbolizes...first of all, the partnership between the Federal Government and
the States, which is essential to the progress of all of our people; and
secondly, it symbolizes the effort we have made to achieve the most modern
Interstate highway system in the world, a system which, when completed, will
save over 8,000 lives a year and $9 billion in cost. And third, it symbolizes
the effort which we are giving and must be giving to organizing an effective
communication system here in the
United States
of America."
As the President spoke, civil rights
protestors marched on the Delaware side within a dozen feet of the platform. One protester held a sign that read:
"Mr. President, you're opening highway No. 95. Now, help us open public
accommodations."
After concluding his brief remarks, President Kennedy joined Governor Elbert N. Carvel of Delaware and Governor J. Millard Tawes of Maryland to clip the ribbon opening the road.
Eight days later, on November 22, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX.
A year after that, in January 1965, during a ceremony in the lobby of a Hot Shoppes restaurant on the turnpike, Governor-elect Charles L. Terry, Jr., of Delaware, unveiled a bust of the late President by sculptor Maurine Ligon of New Castle, DE. With the
unveiling, the highway in Delaware and Maryland was officially renamed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.
"Separate," Not "Equal" Transportation
The new President, former Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, would play an important role in ensuring civil rights for African-Americans and other minorities, but he had little effect on the Interstate System. Indeed, the system had been planned long before the civil rights movement gained broad public and political acceptance.
The period when the Interstate
System was conceived in two reports to Congress, Toll Roads and Free Roads (1939) and Interregional Highways(1944), was very different from the world facing the Interstate builders. In accordance with the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that had rendered "separate but equal" facilities
acceptable, public accommodations along the Nation's roads throughout the South
and adjacent States were racially separate. Elsewhere, de facto segregation was
common.
Neither of the key reports discussed race. However, in drafting them, the then-head of BPR Thomas H. MacDonald and his top assistant, Herbert Fairbank, explained that one of the most beneficial roles of the Interstate System would be revitalizing
America 's cities. The urban world MacDonald and Fairbank wrote about in the 1939 report was one in which the automobile had encouraged "the outward transfer of the homes of citizens" and businesses to the suburbs. Urban homes were now "occupied by the humblest citizens" who lived along the fringe of the business district-"a
blight near its very core!"
|
The Maryland Northeastern Expressway-Delaware Turnpike opened on November 14, 1963, with President John F. Kennedy helping to cut the ribbon before a crowd of 10,000. Left to right: Governor Elbert N. Carvel of Delaware, Kennedy, and Governor J. Millard Tawes of Maryland. The turnpike was renamed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway in 1965. |
At a time when society was embracing
"slum-clearance projects," Interregional Highways explained, the
essential role of government "would be to facilitate the transition financing
of the rehabilitation of blighted areas, to employ its powers of eminent domain
in the public interest, and to fix the standards of redevelopment." To
accomplish the "radical revision of the city plan," sufficient right-of-way
should be acquired, the report said, "for adjacent housing, airport, park, or
other public developments which the highways will be designed to serve in part."
MacDonald and Fairbank proposed
creation of a Federal land acquisition agency to buy rights-of-way and transfer
them to the States. They did not address how displaced families and businesses
would move on with their lives.
By the time President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, KS) had overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and declared the broader segregation of American
society unconstitutional. In 1955, a tired seamstress named Rosa Parks, of Montgomery, AL, boarded a bus at the end of a routine workday. Her arrest for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger touched off a bus boycott that received national attention and helped lift the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to the pinnacle of the civil rights movement. Parks's arrest gave new life to the civil rights movement, just as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring would spark the environmental movement a few years
later.
Some city officials welcomed slum-clearance projects as essential to their long-term economic viability. As Interstates began to run through blighted areas, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. It gave the "humblest citizens" a
voice, an urgency, a legitimacy that MacDonald and Fairbank could not have
anticipated.
For example, in a study of the impact of Interstates on cities, Professor Raymond A. Mohl of the University of Alabama at Birmingham explained how officials in one city rejected using an abandoned railroad corridor in favor of
routing an Interstate through an inner-city community of African-Americans, wiping out housing in another along with the cultural and commercial heart of the community. In a northern city, an elevated freeway was used to separate a black
public housing project from white ethnic neighborhoods. Elsewhere, historic preservationists blocked destruction of a historic district while routing an elevated Interstate through "a devastated black community, a concrete jungle
left in the shadows by a massive elevated highway." Professor Mohl cited similar examples in many other cities.
|
Lady Bird Johnson (right) was instrumental in making aesthetically pleasing views from the road an important goal of the Interstate System. In May 1965 she embarked on a "Landscape-Landmark Tour" in northern Virginia, taking I-95 and parallel U.S. 1 to compare the two highways. At the White House, Mrs. Johnson posed with Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton and his wife, Callie Maud, who brought homemade cookies to share with participants on the bus ride. |
According to Dan McNichol in The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System, by the 1960s,
the urban revitalization that MacDonald and Fairbank thought would accompany
the Interstates was derided as building "white men's roads through black men's homes." Moreover, the reconfiguration of transportation
to favor highways over transit was harmful to transit-dependent minority
communities, contributing to high rates of unemployment and civil unrest. Highway officials were in the difficult position
of defending what were increasingly perceived as racist policies.
Professor Mohl concluded that the
"forced relocation of blacks from central-city areas triggered a massive
spatial reorganization of urban residential space....The expressway building of
the 1950s and 1960s, then, ultimately helped produce the much larger, more
spatially isolated, and more intensely segregated second ghettos characteristic
of the late twentieth century."
Some State highway and city
officials were following the inexorable logic of routing the urgently needed
highways where right-of-way expenses would be lowest and revitalization most
needed, although others made racially motivated decisions, as Professor Mohl documents.
In part, Federal and State highway
officials were driven by the urgency of finishing the Interstate System by the
early 1970s and by visions of the benefits the Nation, particularly cities,
would enjoy when it was completed. The highway officials and urban political
leaders did not foresee that, in their pursuit of "radical revision," they were
exposing America's racial divides and contributing to the problems their successors would confront in
coming decades.
Beauty for America
In November 1964, the American people
gave President Johnson a landslide victory over Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). During the campaign, the President's wife, Lady Bird Johnson,
had complained to her husband about the roadside junkyards they saw along the
way. He revealed her views during remarks on conservation in Portland, OR, on September 17, 1964. The auto
junkyards they had seen during the campaign, he said, "are driving my wife
mad." He said he intended to "develop a national policy for the control and
disposal of technological and industrial waste."
|
Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton, right, meets with Secretary of Commerce John T. Connor, who took office in January 1965, about an Interstate route in Buffalo, NY. |
As U.S.
News & World Report explained, the President's references to the subject during the campaign prompted
applause, so "the President observed: 'If it's beautifying they want, it's
beautifying they'll get.'"
On February 8, 1965, within 3 weeks of renewing his oath of office, President Johnson wrote to
Congress on stewardship of the country's natural bounty. "It would be a
neglectful generation indeed, indifferent alike to the judgment of history and
the command of principle, which failed to preserve and extend such a heritage
for its descendants." The modern highways that "may wipe out the equivalent of
a 50-acre [20-hectare] park with every mile" were one of the culprits.
Recognizing that "ours is an automobile society," the President did not want to
curtail roads. He wanted to make roads the "highways to the enjoyment of nature
and beauty."
He
called for "a new conservation" that would protect the countryside, restore
"what has been destroyed," and "salvage the beauty and charm of our cities." He
was not, he said, referring to the "classic conservation of protection and
development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation." His
creative conservation included proposals for cities, rivers, and trails, as
well as ideas for curbing pollution.
President
Johnson planned several highway initiatives. He had directed Commerce
Secretary John T. Connor,
who had taken over for Secretary Hodges in January 1965, to ensure that landscaping would be
part of all Interstate and Federal-aid primary and urban highways. Johnson also
planned to introduce legislation on effective control of billboards and
"unsightly, beauty-destroying junkyards and auto graveyards along our
highways."
|
President Johnson signed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 on October 21. The first billboard, on I-95 near Freeport, ME, came down under the act in April 1971. Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe addresses reporters and area residents in front of the first billboard to be torn down. |
He
also called a White House Conference on Natural Beauty for May 24-25 in Washington, DC. BPR's Whitton told a conference
panel that "highways are for people," a message he would repeat on many
occasions. "The highways must be beautiful as seen from the driver's seat...and
they also must not be a scourge on the community through which they pass." To
accomplish this goal, he urged cooperation among Federal, State, and city
officials as well as use of "every skill that is available," including "the
skills of architects, landscape architects, highway engineers, and psychologists
and all the others" to create "the best possible transportation system and the
best possible urban plan for our cities."
The President's America the Beautiful initiative proved controversial when the rights of private property owners clashed with
public interests. Billboards, for example, had been criticized for decades, but
controlling their use had proven difficult. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1958 had
declared that control of outdoor advertising was "in the public interest." It
had authorized a bonus program, with the revenue coming from the general
Treasury rather than the Highway Trust Fund,
under which States would receive a 0.5-percent increase in the Federal share of
Interstate construction costs if they agreed to control outdoor advertising.
However, by 1965, only 20 States, with one-fourth of Interstate System mileage
within their borders, had entered into bonus agreements.
Given this limited success, one of
the most prominent results of the President's beauty initiative was passage of
the Highway
Beautification Act of 1965. The signing ceremony took place at the
White House on October
22, the day after the President returned from
surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Recalling the ride from the hospital
along the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the President said, "not one foot of it
was marred by a single unsightly manmade obstruction-no
advertising signs, no junkyards. Well, doctors could prescribe no better
medicine for me." Saying "beauty belongs to all the people," he signed the bill
and gave the first pen to Lady Bird, along with a kiss on the cheek.
The billboard portion of the law
required States to provide effective control of outdoor advertising along the
Interstate System and primary system highways. For States that did not do so,
their Federal-aid apportionment could be reduced by 10 percent. Some signs
would be permitted, namely directional and other official signs, signs and
other devices advertising activities conducted on the property on which they
were located, and signs marketing the sale or lease of the property on which
they were located. The Commerce Secretary was to enter into an agreement with
each State regarding the size, lighting, and spacing, consistent with customary
use, on outdoor advertising.
Signs that did not comply with the
new requirement were to be removed after July 1, 1970, with just compensation
for those that had been erected legally before enactment of the law. The act
authorized $20 million per year for FY 1966 and 1967 for this purpose, with the
funds coming from the general Treasury, not the Highway Trust Fund, and a
Federal share of 75 percent.
To promote the safety and
recreational value of travel and preserve natural beauty, the law also required
effective control of outdoor junkyards along the Interstates and primary system
highways. Effective control meant screening by natural objects, plants, fences,
or other means, with a 10-percent penalty on apportionments for States that did
not comply. The Federal share of junkyard screening projects was 75 percent,
again with $20 million per year from the general Treasury.
The first billboard did not come
down until April
1971,
when a sign in a pine grove off I-95 near Freeport, ME, was removed. Transportation Secretary
John A. Volpe said, "Take her down, boys," as a crane pulled the facing off the
billboard, which had most recently advertised a restaurant and a music store.
|
BPR used this 1966 graphic to put the cost of highways in perspective and allay public displeasure. As BPR explained here, State and Federal highway taxes represented only 1.2 cents of the total 11 cents per mile it cost to own and operate an automobile back then. The figures were based on a $2,800 car driven 100,000 miles over 10 years. |
The Web of Union
A
year after launching the conservation initiative, President Johnson announced
in his State of the Union Address in January 1966 that a U.S. Department of
Transportation was needed.
With 35 government agencies spending $5 billion a year on transportation, he
said, the "present structure makes it almost impossible to serve either the
growing demands of this great Nation or the needs of the industry, or the right
of the taxpayer to full efficiency and frugality."
On March 2, President Johnson
submitted legislation to Congress. "In a Nation that spans a continent," he
wrote in an accompanying message, "transportation is the web of union." The
"tenuous skein of rough trails and primitive roads" of the Nation's early years
had become "a powerful network on which the prosperity and convenience of our
society depend." He urged creation of a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) "to
serve the growing demands of this great Nation, to satisfy the needs of our
expanding industry, and to fulfill the right of our taxpayers to maximum
efficiency and frugality in Government operations."
BPR would be part of the new
Department, but the Housing and Home Finance Agency,
which administered the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964,
would remain in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),
its home since September 1965. The President said that after creation of USDOT,
he would ask the new Secretary of Transportation to work with the HUD Secretary
to submit proposals on "a unified Federal approach to urban problems."
President Johnson signed the U.S.
Department of Transportation Act in
October 1966 before about 200 guests at the White House. The new law brought
together 31 agencies and bureaus; BPR had by far the largest budget, $4.4
billion, in a Department with a total budget of $6.6 billion. "In large
measure," the President said, "
America's
history is a history of her transportation." Although the transportation system
"is the greatest in the world," he added, "we must face facts. It is no longer
adequate." He described his vision that "a day will come in
America, when people and freight will move through this land of ours speedily,
efficiently, safely, and dependably."
The President selected Alan S.
Boyd to
serve as the first Transportation Secretary. A 44-year-old lawyer, Boyd had
been general counsel of the Florida Turnpike Authority and
chairman of the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission before President Eisenhower appointed him to serve on the Civil Aeronautics Board.
Boyd became chairman of the board in 1961 and was appointed Under Secretary of
Commerce in 1965.
President and Mrs. Johnson watched on January 16, 1967, as Boyd took the oath
of office as Transportation Secretary in the East Room of the White House.
The President explained that Boyd would "coordinate a national transportation policy for
this great land of ours...and give the kind of results that the American people
would like to point to with pride."
Administrator Rex Whitton Takes His Leave
By
the time Rex Whitton left office at the end of 1966, he had addressed the
problems that had faced the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways
when he took office. By cooperating with the Blatnik Committee and
strengthening BPR oversight, Whitton had helped put to rest the scandals that
had given critics of "the highway bungle" their strongest, most visible weapon.
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1961 put the program on a sound financial
footing that would carry it through the early 1980s.
The most remarkable transformation
had come in response to the objections on social and environmental grounds.
Initially, Whitton and the road-building community were convinced that these
issues could be addressed with public relations initiatives such as National
Highway Week. Although
Whitton and his successors would continue to stress the positive aspects of the
program, he was, in effect, the bridge between those who thought the benefits
of the Interstate System trumped other considerations and those who would
embrace the growing number of environmental laws and the stewardship they
demanded.
In
February 1966, moreover, BPR announced that the States had met Whitton's
challenge to AASHO by opening more than half of the Interstate System. With the
unveiling of 3,486 kilometers (2,166 miles) in 1965, open mileage totaled
34,094 kilometers (21,185 miles), or 52 percent, of the 65,980-kilometer
(41,000-mile) system. Construction was underway on another 8,980 kilometers (5,580 miles); only 4,634 kilometers (2,880
miles), or 7 percent, of the system had not yet advanced beyond preliminary
status. Approximately $24.7 billion had been put to work on the Interstate
program.
In
November 1966, Whitton was in Wichita, KS, for his final presentation to AASHO
during its annual meeting. Noting that 1966 was the 50th year since
creation of the Federal-Aid Highway Program in 1916, he told his colleagues,
"The first 50 years are the easiest," and as for the future, he said, "You
ain't seen nothing yet."
With
urban populations increasing, the main thrust of highway efforts "should be
directed to easing the plight of cities," he added. Whitton also emphasized the
desirability of "making highway transportation compatible with the environment
while serving many urban needs." Highways, he said, cannot be isolated from
other forms of transportation. "We must plan transportation systems. We cannot afford to do any
less." This is why the new USDOT "makes sense-from any viewpoint, but
particularly with respect to the close and efficient coordination of government
programs for the entire transportation system."
The
one negative Whitton discussed involved displacements and relocations. Only 32
States were paying moving costs, "and far too few States are doing an
outstanding job in providing the basic assistance required." If more States do
not offer assistance voluntarily, it will become mandatory, he said. (Just such
a Federal law, the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition
Policies Act of 1970, would be enacted a few years later.)
Whitton
concluded: "I have been around long enough...to have confidence that our highway
program is not frozen by tradition, that it has not only resiliency but also
the flexibility needed to respond to any new challenge. And I have confidence
that its response, that your response, that the response of the highway
engineer, will be more than adequate to what our Nation expects and
deserves-and that, gentlemen, is a lot."
In
December 1966 a retirement ceremony was held in the General Services
Administration auditorium "filled to overflowing with the
hundreds of associates and employees of Mr. Whitton," according to BPR's
newsletter. Secretary-designate Boyd presented the Commerce Department's Gold Medal to Whitton "for exceptional
achievements as a leader in highways and highway transportation in the
United States, and contributions to these same interests
worldwide."
|
When the Federal Highway Administration began operating on April 1, 1967, it was organized into bureaus. Secretary of Transportation Alan S. Boyd (left) administered the oath of office to longtime career employee Francis C. "Frank" Turner as director of the Bureau of Public Roads. |
A New Department Takes Off
The new USDOT opened for business on April 1,
1967. On the National Mall, Secretary Boyd joined with the Smithsonian
Institution in celebrating the opening ceremonies
of a spring gala dubbed the "Pageant of Transportation." After a news conference during
which he introduced Department leaders, Boyd pledged that the new agency would
work to make transportation more efficient and more socially responsible. In a
remark that seemed directed at perceptions of the Interstate System, he added,
"We want an end to the noise, pollution, and general disfigurement
transportation has unintentionally brought to our cities."
The opening of the new Department
meant changes for BPR. One involved its name. "Bureau of Public Roads" had been
used during two periods of the agency's history spanning 39 years, with "Public
Roads Administration" being the interim name. On April 1, 1967, the agency
became the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The newly renamed agency was
organized into bureaus headed by directors, with the BPR name retained for one
of them, along with the Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety (now
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) and the National Highway Safety Bureau (now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration).
With the additions, the agency increased from about 4,800 employees at the end
of 1966 to 5,360 employees a year later. (In August 1970, FHWA eliminated the
bureau structure, replacing the directors with associate administrators and
finally ending use of the name BPR.)
The director of BPR was
Francis C. "Frank" Turner, who had joined BPR in 1929 after graduating from
Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Texas A&M University).
In the 1950s he had played a key role in the committee established by President
Eisenhower and headed by retired General Lucius D. Clay to develop a national
highway plan, and had served as liaison between BPR and the key committees in
Congress during development of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. (In
February 1969 he became the only career employee to become Federal Highway Administrator.)
Perhaps the most surprising change
was that the first person to hold the title of Federal Highway Administrator in
the new department would not be an engineer. Lowell K. Bridwell had
been a journalist throughout his career, most recently as the top writer on
highways for the Washington bureau of Scripps
Howard Newspapers.
He had joined the Commerce Department in April 1962 as assistant to
Transportation Under Secretary Clarence Martin, Jr., and held other Commerce
posts over the next 5 years. He would take office as Federal Highway
Administrator in March 1967 and hold the position until the end of the Johnson
Administration, January 20, 1969.
Pioneer of Modern Highway Construction
After leaving BPR, Rex Whitton
returned to Kansas
City, MO, where he accepted a position as
consultant to the engineering firm of Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff . He retired in 1975. The following
year he told FHWA
News, the agency newsletter, that he and
his wife enjoyed driving to auction sales for antiques. However, they avoided
the freeways he had helped to build. He never liked driving on them, he said,
and now enjoyed "driving on the little back roads, keeping a map of each one we
travel."
Rex
Whitton passed away at age 82 on July 7, 1981, after a long illness. The passing of
the man who had rescued the Interstate System was little
noticed around the country. However, an obituary in AASHTO Quarterly noted, "His national reputation as a
pioneer of modern highway construction not only brings honor to his memory, but
also to a profession he dearly loved."
Richard F. Weingroff is the information liaison officer in the FHWA Office of Infrastructure.
For more information on the early days
of the Interstate System, visit www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/homepage.cfm or
www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/history.htm.
Other Articles in this issue:
Road Users Can Grow Old Gracefully—With Some Help
The Evolution of Advanced Research
Following the Flow
Acting Now, Building for the Future
The Battle of Its Life
A High-Tech Route for Freight Efficiency
Gearing Up for an Aging Population