EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT NATIONAL RESOURCES PLANNING BOARD May 25, 1942. The PRESIDENT, The White House. MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: We have the honor to transmit herewith a report on "Transportation and National Policy" prepared in accordance with your request of January 24, 1940. The document includes a letter of transmittal from the Honorable Owen D. Young as Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Transportation Study; a summary report of findings and recommendations prepared by Dr. Ralph J. Watkins, Director of the Study, under the general guidance of Mr. Young; and a series of staff and agency contributions prepared by a group of specialists from both within and without the Government. The Board is fully in accord with the view that the building of a superior and more effective transport system is a basic essential to the fuller development of our national economy. This is the most compelling of the many important conclusions issuing from the Transportation Study. Transportation is not an end in itself, but rather the means toward many ends; and because of this its significance is magnified over and over again as its influence diffuses through the whole economy. It is for this reason that such importance must be attached to overcoming through the best possible transportation plant the obstacles which time and space impose upon the productivity of all our resources. The report calls attention to the inadequacy of our present transportation plant, despite evidence of oversupply in the form of duplications, overlappings, and unnecessary mileage, particularly in the railroad industry; the increasing extent to which the railroads the backbone of our transportation system-are and after the war will be increasingly subject to intense competition by air, pipe-line, water, and highway transportation. Before the present war began, this competition had already reduced many railroads to a precarious financial condition. Adjustment by the railroads to new conditions and increasing competition by other forms of transportation is essential and will come either by the hard road of financial disaster or by broad gauge planning, consolidation, reorganization, and rebuilding in anticipation of the future. All of this planning and adjustment must consider the railroads in relation to the other modes of transportation and in relation to the needs of the country as a whole rather than to the ambitions of competing systems. With the end of the present war, millions of men will be released from war activities. The need for employment of these men in peacetime activities will coincide with a huge demand for labor if the task of transport modernization and rebuilding which undoubtedly lies ahead is undertaken with vision, courage, and practical judgment, and on the scale which conditions demand. No better time could be found for undertaking major modernization of transport facilities. The transportation system has its setting in a dynamic economy, and hence the problem we face is and will be a constantly changing one. No "final" solution will ever be achieved. The problem, rather, is to set up machinery and to formulate guiding principles whereby continuing adjustment can be made to new situations as they develop; to changes in the technology of transport; to changes in the character of demand for transportation service; to changes in economic organization; and finally, to changes in national policy. In recognition of this dynamic problem great emphasis must be placed on the recommendation that a permanent National Transportation Agency be established to coordinate all Federal development activities in transportation in relation to a general and progressive plan. We strongly endorse that recommendation and urge that all practicable steps be taken to translate it into action. Plans for post-war development cannot be considered apart from the necessity of completely overhauling the basic transportation facilities of the Nation. This physical reconstruction, combined with service and policy revisions, must aim not only at modernization but at the ultimate realization of a transport industry which will permit each mode of transport its economic functioning as an integral part of the whole system. Such a system, moreover, must be encompassed in the broader plans for the entire post-war economy. Finally, the transportation policy of tomorrow must offer constant encouragement for innovation and ample opportunity to meet the needs of changing conditions to assure that transport development may at all times contribute maximum impetus to national achievement. We have before us in the field of transportation a frontier of opportunity-the opportunity of remaking our transport plant into one commensurate with our technological possibilities and in keeping with the unfolding promise of American life. The only barriers that stand in the way are those of our habits of thinking, of our fiscal policy, and of our organizational limitations. It lies in the genius of the American people to overcome those barriers. Respectfully submitted. FREDERIC A. DELANO, Chairman. CHARLES E. MERRIAM. |