National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966: Legislative History

To achieve comparable improvements throughout the maritime industry, I am directing the Secretary of Commerce, with the Secretary of Defense, the President's scientific adviser, and the Atomic Energy Commission, to conduct a study of advanced vessel concepts. The work of this team will include:

Research, development, and planning of high-speed, largecapacity ships, devoted primarily to transporting preloaded containers of varying types between the major ports in the world. Research on an oceangoing surface effects vessel capable of skimming over the water at speeds more than 100 knots.

Continued exploration of the application of nuclear propulsion to merchant marine ships.

Our private shipyards should continue to serve the needs of the country. They can become more productive and competitive through research and development and through standardization of ship construction. With a new Department of Transportation, we will increase our efforts to bring a modern, efficient merchant marine fleet to this Nation.

ADVANCED LAND TRANSPORT

Last year Congress took a long step toward advanced land transportation by enacting the high-speed ground transportation research and development program. This program will be continued at the most rapid pace consistent with sound management of the research effort.

Similar vision and imagination can be applied to highway transport. Segments of the interstate highway network already in operation are the most efficient, productive roads ever built anywhere in the world. Motor vehicles move at higher rates of speed, more safely, and in greater number per lane than on conventional roads. Transportation costs are reduced, and less land area is needed for this volume of traffic.

With the network about half completed after 10 years, it is apparent that interstate highways, as well as other roads and streets, can become even more productive and safe.

Accordingly, I am directing the Secretary of Commerce to

investigate means for providing guidance and control mechanisms to increase the capacity and improve the safety of our highway network;

conduct research into the means of improving traffic flowparticularly in our cities-so we can make better use of our existing roads and streets; and

investigate the potential of separate roadways for various classes of vehicles, with emphasis on improving mass transportation service.

SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Some of our brightest opportunities in research and development lie in the less obvious and often neglected parts of our transportation

system.

We spend billions for constructing new highways, but comparatively little for traffic control devices.

We spend millions for fast jet aircraft-but little on the traveler's problem of getting to and from the airport.

We have mounted a sizable government-industry program to expand exports, yet we allow a mountain of redtape paperwork negate our efforts. Worldwide, a total of 810 forms are required to cover all types of cargo imported and exported. In this country alone, as many as 43 separate forms are used in one export shipment. Eighty separate forms may be needed to process some imports. This is paperwork run wild.

I am directing the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce and the Attorney General to attack these problems, through the use of effective systems research programs. And I have directed them to eliminate immediately every unnecessary element of red tape that inhibits our import and export programs.

TRANSPORTATION FOR AMERICA

The Founding Fathers rode by stage to Philadelphia to take part in the Constitutional Convention. They could not have anticipated the immense complexity-or the problems of transportation in our day.

Yet they, too, recognized the vital national interest in commerce between the States. The early Congresses expressed that interest even more directly, by supporting the development of road and waterway systems.

Most important, the Founding Fathers gave us a flexible system of government. Cities, States, and the Federal Government can join together and in many cases work with private enterprise-in partnerships of creative federalism to solve our most complex problems.

For the very size of our transportation requirements-rising step by step with the growth of our population and industry-demands that we respond with new institutions, new programs of research, new efforts to make our vehicles safe, as well as swift.

Modern transportation can be the rapid conduit of economic growth-or a bottleneck.

It can bring jobs and loved ones and recreation closer to every family-or it can bring instead sudden and purposeless death.

It can improve every man's standard of living or multiply the cost of all he buys.

It can be a convenience, a pleasure, the passport to new horizons of the mind and spirit or it can frustrate and impede and delay.

The choice is ours to make.

We build the cars, the trains, the planes, the ships, the roads, and the airports. We can, if we will, plan their safe and efficient use in the decades ahead to improve the quality of life for all Americans. The program I have outlined in this message is the first step toward that goal.

I urge its prompt enactment by the Congress.

THE WHITE HOUSE, March 2, 1966.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON.

Senate and House Committee

Calendars

LEGISLATIVE CALENDAR
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE

S. 3005

Mar. 2, 1966

To provide for a coordinated national safety program and establishment of safety standards for motor vehicles in interstate commerce to reduce traffic accidents and the deaths, injuries, and property damage which occur in such accidents.

Mr. Magnuson (by request of Commerce Department)

Books

National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966: Legislative ..., Volume 1