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On March 25, 1955, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks released the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) report on Needs of the Highway Systems, 1955-1984, as requested by Section 13 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954. The report covered all highway needs, but its estimate of the...
After Vice President Richard M. Nixon, speaking on President Eisenhower's behalf, invited the Governors to suggest ways of improving the Nation's highway network, the Governors Conference appointed a Special Highway Committee headed by Governor Walter Kohler, Jr., of Wisconsin. The Committee...
March 11, 1955
Subcommittee on Public Roads
Committee on Public Works
United States Senate
The subcommittee met at 10:05 a.m., in room 412, Senator Office Building, Senator Albert Gore presiding:
Senator Gore: The committee will come to order.
...Senator Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. In 1952, he challenged Senator Kenneth McKellar, who had been a Senator for 35 years, in the Democratic primary. McKellar was seen as an entrenched "shoo-in" who would easily defeat his 44-year...
by Richard F. Weingroff
On July 12, 1954, Vice President Richard M. Nixon informed the Governors Conference at Lake George, New York, of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Grand Plan-a $101 billion program to create an articulated highway system, one in which the Federal,...
Governor Thornton, distinguished Governors of the States of the Union, the distinguished First Ladies of the States of the Union, guests of the Governors Conference:
I want you to know, first of all, that it is a great privilege for me to have had the opportunity to attend this...
President Harry S. Truman, a lifelong good roads booster, had done little to promote good roads or the Interstate System during his years as the Nation's Chief Executive. (See "The Man Who Loved Roads," Public Roads, May/June 2002, at ...
The President-elect issued the following statement to the Hearst Newspapers, then in the midst of an extensive highway improvement campaign:
The obsolescence of the nation's highways presents an appalling problem of waste, death and danger.
Next to the manufacture of...
The increasing need for highway improvement prompted the General Motors (GM) Corporation to announce, on November 20, 1952, a Better Highway Award for the best essay on "How to plan and pay for the safe and adequate highways we need." Prize money totaled $194,000 for 161 awards, with the grand...