HIGHWAYS IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19125, 17 September 1925, Page 9

HIGHWAYS IN AMERICA.

A VAST EXPENDITURE. OVER £200,000,000 A YEAR. BUSES COMPETING WITH TRAINS. i [PROM our own correspondent.] SAN FRANCISCO Auk. 24. United States taxpayers are now spending 1,000,0013,000 dollars (over £200,000,000) a year on improved highways, 60 per cent, of which is going toward new construction. On rollingstock, using these roads, the annual expenditure is 5,000,000,000 dollars, half of which goes in new motor vehicles, the balance being spent on gasoline, tyres, repairs, depreciation, etc. There are 3,000,000 miles of public roads. The mileage surfaced is 470,000 miles and surfacing is going on at the rate of 55,000 miles annually. Last year, according to official statistics; taxpayers paid over £90,000,000 in special taxes alone from motor-vehicle users, or 44.8 per cent, of the whole rural highway burden. This is delusive of motor-cars, personal property and municipal taxes. State highway departments spent £80,000,000 for construction and £20,000,000 for maintenance. Federal and ■to the highways amounts to £15,000,000 a year, or less than 8 per cent, of the total highway expenditure. On the other hand, in special war excise taxes, motor-vehicle .owners have contributed about £100,000,000 to the treasurer, or more than double the amount which he has thus far expended on public roads, in the form of Federal aid. The motorists paid last year in registration fees £41,000,000; 'in gasoline taxes, , £16,000,000, and in Federal excise taxes, £28,000,000. : The Highway of the Future. The president of the American association of State highway officials puts the average price of punishment inflicted on the motorist by unimproved roads at about £26 a year for the average vehicle. The highest authority on trucks in the United States says they will increase much more rapidly in future than private passenger cars, and there are now nearly two million of them. Small trucks are rapidly displacing horses in all farm-to-market traffic. . When the present United States highway programme is completed, the farms of the United States will average not more than six miles from an improved highway. An authority pictures the highway of the future as a trunk-line, bypass road, serving congested districts, but not passing through them and carrying through and express traffic, both passenger and freight. Such will have a carrying capacity of three or four times the ordinary highway, having the same floor space. They will accommodate two or more lines of traffic each way, the high speed vehicle on the inner lanes and those of slower speed on the outer ones. Countries, like Australia and New Zealand/ whose Governments are concerned •it the competition of motor-buses with the railways, may be interested in the Knowledge that all over the United States buses are successfully competing with the railways. The longest paved highway in the world commences •' at Vancouver, and runs through Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles to the Mexican border, a distance of 1950 miles. Passengers may travel the whole journey by motor-buses, which attain a speed up to 50 miles an hour. The fare on the Los' Angeles-San Francisco section—a distance of 470 iniles—is twelve dollars, compared with twenty-two dollars by rail. ' The Motor-Camping Habit. There are now se% r enteen and a-half million motor-cars in use in the United States. In 1924 no fewer than 12,000,000 persons went in for real motor-camping and slept in their own tents or cars at night. Their camping outfit cost £90,000.000. One-third of the campers were new to the open road. Their camp gear was new and cost £4O for each party. The daily expenses of campers run to £2 for a party of average size. Their expenditure, incredible as it may seem, is two-thirds of the entire amount that it cost to run the United States Government and all its various activities during the fiscal year just closed. The movement is so new that its extent is not universally known. It is so vast that, even when known, it is impossible to visualise it. . ■ -