General Economics Underlying the Highway

Chief of the U.S.Bureau of Public Beads The highway is a thing of service -particularly individual service.It coses intiawt«ly into bua&n life in its ordinary phases • and activities.This is an unchanging aspect and individual servicefunctioning of the hi/n way holds true in #natever country it say be located.Highway transport has a very definite place in the general transportation scheme and in this country as now recognise it as an .essentinl elezs«nt , ana V: -ve found in its developsrt>at a satisfactory • ond incrensin* rplief frou.tfr* lack of transportation of the kind for Vnicb th* ne»d hs»s long exi•.ted, and rhich could not be supplied unti'I the i>?rfectin>: of t^e mtor vehirip.Civilisation has ^rodur-pd three tynas of transportation for ordinary tt«a?*e-rail, witer r..nd highway, "^ach has definite supremacy.'V&e'r: V»s its limitations ,^.nd it is a mistake to ntteapt to substitute on* tnr^ whpre -mother is better fitted, to «5UT>1 icqte if satisfac tory tran*rrort #ti~>r< of ->oti.*rf:>r?v-in -ilreiay available, or to allow coar^tition to oestro^ or prevent efficient service.Influence of '-s'ater Tran'i-jortniton on Hew England thinking back to the earlier history of the United States water transportation allossu the first white settlers to reach the country.Water transportation had such a profound iaflueaoe' in the settlement of the flaw 3»&l£iid atetes that today it is ~ 2 «~ Bswrtec that 70 percent of the population live within fifty Eiilfs of thp-f-^aaoard, snd a !tajor ~ssrt of the industrial activity in contained in the saise area.?he influence of the early wagon route?; and the early canals into the interior is today very soparent.and it was by water and by overland wagon trail tb*>t the great agricultural district of the Miss issippi Valley, and the Pacific Coast were pioneered.But neither the highway nor the water route could ever have made possible the corauereial entity of the United States.7h« railroads reduced the 3istance between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts BS .i.*rsur<*d not by asiles but by tiae, until the great xajor districts of the United states were brought close, e cease re ialiy and politically.Tet eren the railroads • and the waterways could not multiply themselves into the al most infinite nuaher of relatively assail services needed by the individual «uad the cozamunity.Thus, the agricultural di stricta -defended utsoa the horse-drawn vehicle and highly, and the city upon the horse-d rawn vehicle and the electric cars where there was a sufficient use to justify their opera tion, vail soon Have Sexistration of 20.000,000 Iben the a-otor vehicle first asada its apnearaiwse, the radius of activity of the individual was determined