AASHTO Journal, 15 July 2016
July 11 marked the 100th anniversary of when President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916, which established the nation’s first ongoing program to provide federal funds to build highways across the nation.
The Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials observed the centennial in social media posts, including one on Facebook, and emphasized how its own history was tied into that landmark legislation.
Bud Wright, AASHTO’s executive director and a former executive director at the Federal Highway Administration, told the AASHTO Journal that the anniversary is a poignant one for transportation professionals across the nation.
“For much of the nation’s history, states or private investors built and maintained most of the roads or canals that knit the country together, but it was a patchwork system that varied greatly among states,” Wright said. “When that 1916 law produced an enduring federal-aid program, and began to spread national construction standards, the country finally had a way to help states plan and build the transportation networks that would create the world’s strongest economy.”
Joining Wilson 100 years ago at the White House bill-signing ceremony were officials from AASHTO’s predecessor American Association of State Highway Officials, plus the American Automobile Association and farmers’ organizations.
The Federal-Aid Road Act was the original linchpin of what would eventually become the extensive U.S. surface transportation system and the federal-state partnership programs that support it – including the Highway Trust Fund, Interstate Highway System and federal highway and transit agencies.
“From our association’s perspective, helping produce that legislation and an ongoing federal transportation program was among the key reasons why a group of state highway agency leaders formed a national organization in late 1914,” said AASHTO Communications Director Lloyd Brown.
“Looking back at it now, in an era when it often takes many years to simply renew and fund the federal programs, what they achieved from 1914 to 1916 was remarkable,” he added.
The 1916 law apportioned matching funds to states for road building based on area, population and post road mileage. It also contained important requirements to compel states to put their road-building programs under specialized agencies with professional engineers.
A 2014 AASHTO Centennial Commemorative Book explained: “The bill included a provision requiring the establishment of state highway departments headed by engineers in order to shift power and responsibility for highway construction to states and away from cities and counties. States had to have administrative highway departments that met federal criteria in order to qualify for federal funds.”
That article also said that in 1916, “11 of the then 48 states didn’t have highway departments. By 1919 every state had formed a highway department that met the federal criteria.”