The U.S. Plans for Its Future

PUBLIC WORKS

A WHOLE new world is being built for the U.S.--on paper--by a group of practical dreamers whose job it is to foresee the needs of the future created by the growth of the U.S. economy. These dreamers are planners of public works for city, state and federal agencies.They have already blueprinted continuous, multi-lane highways girdling the nation, overhead expressways and underground garages for cities, spanking new schools and hospitals for all the U.S. Estimated cost of all the dreams: $100 billion.

Actually, the dreams are not farfetched. Some of them are already taking reality in steel and concrete--and many will pay for themselves. As any Sunday driver knows, one of the nation's greatest needs is for new and improved highways. With some 75,000 miles of its roads now sadly deficient, the U.S. is falling behind in its rebuilding at the rate of about 5,000 miles a year; up to $50 billion could be profitably spent on roads alone in the next ten years. Many of the new highways now planned or building will be self-liquidating toll roads, like the successful Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes. Massachusetts, for example, will start one such $200 million cross-state toll highway by the end of this year; Kansas is considering a new superhighway from Kansas City to Wichita; Ohio is just now launching a $326 million east-west toll road to link up with the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Every city in the U.S. has growing traffic congestion; billions must be spent to unsnarl it. In New York City, some $40 million a year is being spent on arterial highways. Boston is building a $20 million elevated highway to relieve downtown traffic; Atlanta has a $75 million expressway system on its books; Columbus has one blueprinted. Cities will spend more millions removing the "blighted areas" that rot away their cores. In Manhattan alone, whole blocks of Harlem slums are now being razed; modern brick apartments are taking their place.

The huge new public-works projects are not makeshift boondoggles, hastily thrown together, as in Depression days, just to spend money fast and create jobs. They represent real economic needs. All over the U.S., soaring population has created a need for new schools, hospitals, airports, water and sewage systems. With the nation's population rising at the rate of 2,600,000 a year, the needs are pyramiding. They are most acute in Southern California, the fastest-growing region in the U.S. Los Angeles now has a population of about 4,000,000, expects 6,000,000 by 1960 and 10 million by 1970; San Diego County (pop. about 700,000) is planning for 1,250,000 by 1960, twice that by 1970.

The existence of these public-works plans also provides a useful cushion to ease the impact of any future economic blow. A new concept of planning has grown up since the Depression created the need. It has been made an integral and accepted part of federal, state and local governments. Nowadays, in preparing for the future, planners separate public-works projects into two major categories: 1) those that must be built as quickly as the money can be raised; 2) those that can be deferred and taken off the shelf when they may be needed to combat a slump.

Since World War II, Congress has appropriated $92 million in loans for use by state and local governments in planning for the future. Result: when the Eisenhower Administration came to power, there was a backlog of $6.2 billion worth of state, local and federal plans already blueprinted. Far from trying to junk such projects, the Eisenhower team took them over with two objectives: to use them whenever needed but execute them with less waste and political graft, and to encourage local communities to start their own projects.

But the Administration also knows that in any severe slump, when uneasy taxpayers are not likely to vote approval for local debt increases, the main burden of pump-priming must be borne by the Federal Government. It is on this basis that Eisenhower's chief public-works planner, Arthur Burns, the ex-Columbia University economics professor who bosses the Council of Economic Advisers, is making his plans. He has been poring over the legacy of blueprints, setting up a system to keep the inventory up to date as plans are executed, and improving the machinery to put deferred plans into operation quickly. -

Many of the projects, of course, will be built no matter what happens; the Federal Government itself this year is spending $3 billion on hydroelectric systems, hospitals and other public works. If need be, Burns figures, highway spending alone can be boosted by $100 million on a month's notice. Within a year he could start at least $1 billion worth of additional public works. Thus the U.S. is prepared for economic emergencies, and at the same time is providing for future growth.

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