military vehicle loads on the pavements and bridges so that defense highway requirements are within the requirements for efficient and effective highway transportation to serve our peacetime economy ** (p. 158). "*** the Department of Defense policy is that we will distribute the load or divide it where that is possible so as not to come to the Congress and ask for a special super-supersystem of highways, which would serve only one possible purpose, namely, defense. The highways that meet our civilian needs are also adequate to meet our military needs" (p. 173). The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions of Dr. Behling? If not, Dr. Behling, we thank you for coming to the committee and giving us the enthusiasm that you have expressed. Our next witness is Maj. Gen. Louis W. Prentiss, executive vice president, American Roadbuilders Association. STATEMENT OF LOUIS W. PRENTISS, MAJOR GENERAL, U.S. ARMY (RETIRED), EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ROAD BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION The CHAIRMAN. We have known you for a great number of years, General Prentiss. You used to be a part of the Corps of Engineers of the Army. We welcome you to the committee, and we are glad to recognize you to proceed at this time. General PRENTISS. Mr. Chairman and Congressman Mason, it is a pleasure for me to have this opportunity to appear before you gentlemen, particularly to see you, Congressman Mills, again. I am Louis W. Prentiss, executive vice president of the American Roadbuilders' Association, with headquarters in Washington. We are a national organization, organized in 1902, with membership representative of the entire highway industry and the highway engineering profession. Our 7,000 members include educators, contractors, manufacturers, material suppliers, highway officials and engineers, consulting engineers, and commercial and investment bankers. Our major objective is, and always has been, a long-range, balanced, soundly financed highway program in the interests of the economic development of our country, motoring safety, and the requirements of the national defense. We are grateful for the invitation of this committee to testify. We have been especially interested in the development and progress of the work on the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The concept of highway planning embodied in the Highway Act of 1956 is very much in harmony with the objectives of our association, with particular respect to the long-range aspects of the program. We believe that such an approach to highway planning, financing, and construction is much to be preferred to a year-by-year, stop-andstart, boom-and-bust method. As a matter of fact, the American Roadbuilders' Association was called upon, during the lengthy discussions which preceded the enactment of the 1956 act, to make studies leading to an evaluation of the ability and readiness of the engineering profession and highway industry to plan, design, and execute such a broad-scale program to eliminate deficiencies in the Nation's highways. The results of these studies, which became known as the American Road Builders' Association task force reports, proved to be of great value in gaging the potentialities of the various components of the highway industry. The findings stated, in sum, that the industry did have the potential capacity to accomplish the mission, provided that action was preceded by wise advance planning. The record of the past 3 years has demonstrated the accuracy of the task force reports. The highway industry, anticipating the increasing demands required by the implementation of the act of 1956, adjusted itself to meet the changing conditions. This adjustment could not have taken place without the assurance of continuity which is a key feature of a long-range program. Because of this industry buildup in anticipation of demand, and because of the obvious advantages of being able to make a firm estimate of demand well into the future, we have been greatly concerned by the threats that the timetable may be upset and that the Federal Government may return to a stop-and-go system of financing highway construction. Such a retrogression would be disastrous, not only to the highway industry, but also to our country as a whole. We are at a stage in our national development at which we must make it possible for economic growth to keep pace with the dynamic growth of our population. Our highways are one of the key factors in a transportation system that is, in turn, a key to our national economic development. Our membership includes a great number of businessmen, a few large businessmen and many small businessmen. As businessmen and taxpayers, we are wholly in sympathy with and appreciative of the efforts of the Committee on Ways and Means to see to it that the activities of the Federal Government are financed in an equitable and efficient manner. For the same reason, we can appreciate the concern which committee members have expressed during these hearings with regard to the cost of the Interstate System. The greatest construction project in the history of the world, as it has been correctly termed, does involve the expenditure of large sums of money. It would be useless, on our part, to duplicate the testimony of other witnesses detailing the cost of completing the Interstate System and explaining the reasons why the estimated price of the system is what it is. On the other hand, we feel that this committee, in addition to taking due cognizance of the cost of the highway program, should also take note of the benefits to be derived from the completed Interstate System. For cost, after all, is a meaningful term only when it is considered in relation to the anticipated benefits. An investment of $100 may well be an expensive investment if it will involve a return of only $1 per year, but the same investment becomes much more attractive if a $10 per year return is in sight. In very much the same way, the estimated cost of the Interstate System is a figure that, to be interpreted, must be studied in relation to the worth of the system. It is pertinent to ask what the completed system will be worth, as a national capital investment. The question is not easily answered. At the risk of seeming unnecessarily repetitious, I call your attention again to the comprehen sive study by the Bureau of Public Roads, scheduled to be completed by January 1961, relating to the proportionate distribution of benefits accruing from the highways to the various classes of highway users and nonusers. As this committee has been informed, time and again, the results of the study will be useful to Congress in considering a revision of the taxes imposed to support highway construction. Let me point out another possible use of the study: By identifying the various types of highway beneficiaries and estimating the amount of benefit accruing to each, the study may make it possible to arrive at a reasonably accurate dollar figure for the total value received from the Federal-aid highway system or identifiable portions thereof. Some benefits, it is true, can never be assigned a dollars-and-cents figure. For example, it is estimated that 4,000 lives will be saved annually by the completed Interstate and Defense System, because the modern design of these highways will eliminate many traffic accidents, particularly the usually fatal head-on collisions. We might take the average age of the traffic victim, assume a lifetime earning capacity, and work out the figures to show the manpower loss from premature death, but, as we all know, such ghoulish calculations are inadequate to measure the value of the 4,000 lives saved each year. At the same time, each of us who owns an automobile and buys accident insurance knows that the cost of property damage and personal injuries resulting from highway accidents is appallingly high. It amounts, according to a recent report by the Bureau of Public Roads, to 122 cents per gallon of gasoline consumed. For the year 1957, the Association of Casualty and Surety Companies estimated the property damage from accidents at $7.25 billion, an amount which closely approximates the total spent for highway construction and maintenance that year. This loss amounted to $2,114 for every mile of road and street in the Nation, and $116 for every motor vehicle be registered. On the Interstate System, which is expected to carry at least 20 percent of all U.S. traffic by 1975, accident costs will be reduced from 1 cent per vehicle mile to 0.3 cent per vehicle mile, a total saving of at least $750 million a year. There are several reasons for expecting such a good safety record from the Interstate and Defense System. First and foremost of these reasons is controlled access, where vehicles are permitted to enter and leave the highway only at certain designated points. Quoting from "The Federal Role in Highway Safety" to compare safety records of similar highways with and without access control: In Virginia, the controlled-access Shirley Highway experienced a fatality rate of 0.8 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles, as compared with a death rate of 10.6 on parallel U.S. No. 1. In Maryland, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway-Expressway with controlled access had a rate of 3.7 compared with U.S. No. 1, which had a rate of 7.4. In California, a 180-mile rural freeway had a death rate of 4.1 as compared to a 170-mile rural highway without control access which had a rate of 8.8. The great advantage of the controlled-access highway is the complete elimination of intersections at grade. Some of the favorable statistics cited above are accounted for in part by other design features usually associated with access control. Some of these features are: Properly designed median strips for traffic separation. Traffic lanes of sufficient number and width to keep traffic moving. Adequate shoulders for emergency use. Elimination of sharp curves, both vertical and horizontal, to permit proper sighting of traffic and roadway conditions. Highway lighting at hazardous areas. The design standards of the Interstate System, in addition to promoting safety, will have a marked effect on the operating costs incurred in travel on the Interstate System. The elimination of intersections at grade, steep grades and sharp curves will mean a saving of at least $750 million per year in the direct operating costs of trucks and buses and at least $500 million per year in the direct operating costs of passenger cars. The interstate highway user will also realize the intangible benefits of time saved, not only on long trips, but, in many cases, in daily short trips to and from his place of employment. A valuable application of the time-saving feature will be the extension of practical commuting distances, so that the employment opportunities of labor will be greatly broadened because of the workers' increased mobility. One of the most conspicuous benefits to be derived from a nationwide network of express highways is the stimulus to industrial development which will result from this new extension of our national transportation network. In the same way that economical water and rail transportation led to the development of new cities and new industries in earlier times, the development of an efficient modern highway network will bring new economies to the industries of the United States. Access to markets and sources of raw materials, access to mobilized labor market, the availability of choice sites away from urban congestion; all of these appeal to the industrial site locators. To support the growing economy of the United States, highways must keep pace with population expansion and industrial expansion. A delay in the compltion of th Defense and Interstate System may result in choking off some of the natural tendency of industry to develop and improve itself. The importance of the Interstate and Defense System to economic development and highway safety has been discussed more fully, or at least more often, than the relationship the completed system will bear to the requirements of the national defense. When defense requirements are discussed, we are prone to take the narrow or limited view of military requirements and think only in terms of the movement of troops, weapons, and military supplies. Occasionally, we may also mention the possibility of the mass evacuation of population from key industrial cities in the event of attack. The subject is broader than that. Some of the considerations that apply to the construction of modern military highways are these: (1) Modern war demands a tremendous outpouring of industrial goods, placing a heavy strain on the entire economy. Express highway connections between the principal centers of industry and population are an important military as well as civil requirement. (2) Without controlled access, large volume priority movements, frequently essential in time of war, are almost an impossibility, and certainly cannot be made at the speed possible where access is controlled. (3) Military freight frequently must be shipped in large packages; highway weight capacities and clearances must be designed accordingly. (4) Military concepts in the space age place a high priority on mobility, particularly mobility for our defensive weapons so that their locations cannot be pinpointed and hence subjected to early destruction. Overland mobility will be required in addition to mobility in the air and in the sea. (5) The danger of attack which may cripple air and rail transport by destroying critical airfields and rail facilities may also destroy sections of highways. However, this possibility emphasizes the value of an adequate highway net, because alternate routes, bypasses and circumferential highways will insure the continuation of this artery of transportation. Still another benefit, of very significant magnitude, is the economic activity generated from the highway construction activity itself. One billion dollars of highway construction contributes to the gross national product as follows: Steel___ Bituminous materials_ Cement__ Explosives- Aggregates- __tons- Quantity 510, 000 995, 000 16, 000, 000 -pounds 18, 345, 000 _tons-- 76, 415, 000 1 For each $1,000,000 in excess of an annual rate of $5,800,000 of construction. These facts convince ARBA that this is a sound investment and one which would show a most favorable cost-benefit ratio. If, for purposes of making such a computation, the useful life of the system is set at 50 years, it would not be difficult to estimate tangible benefits amounting to three or more times the cost. In the Corps of Engineers, we always used the cost-benefit ratio as a guide to whether a program is economically sound. At the beginning of this statement, I made reference to the planned expansion of the highway industry to meet the demands of the accelerated highway program. In the early stages of the interstate and defense program, a large proportion of the effort has been concentrated on those things that must come first, such as design engineering and right-of-way acquisition. For that reason, much of the expansion in the last 3 years in the highway industry has been expansion in anticipation of heavier future demands, rather than expansion to keep up with orders. In this connection, I want to point to the valuable contribution made to the acceleration of the program by the consulting engineering profession. A recent study indicates that consultants have performed nearly 40 percent of the nationwide engineering load. It is evident now that a sufficient reserve capacity has been built up by all segments of the industry to meet all foreseeable demands. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Mines reports that the capacity of U.S. cement plants has increased 35 percent since the start of |