The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Author:Earl Swift [Swift, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It didn't take long for the states to jump on the program. Barely a month after the president signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, they had more than $800 million worth of projects in the planning pipeline and a slew ready to advertise for bids. Eisenhower declared himself "gratified."

Cap Curtiss, the bureau's top man, tried to cool expectations that work would start so swiftly everywhere. "A few drivers will see actual construction beginning in their particular areas within the next few months," he told an interviewer, but though the interstates would "spread rapidly in terms of a national total... the sheer magnitude of the job and the thousands of individual projects mean that there will be no magical overnight relief."

Ike was among the impatient, however. He decided it might goose things along to put a new boss in charge of the project—a presidential appointee who'd be confirmed by the Senate, and who'd be able to use his higher national profile to better herd the states. At the president's behest, Congress created the post of federal highway administrator, who'd be top adviser to the White House on roads policy and oversee the interstate program while Cap Curtiss ran the bureau's day-to-day operation.

That October, word came that the job would go to "one of the world's greatest builders of roads," as the newspapers knighted him—Bertram D. Tallamy of New York, architect of the 562-mile New York Thruway, the longest toll superhighway in America. The tall, mustachioed Tallamy had spent several successful years in contracting before chucking his private-side career for public service, helping devise New York's highway design standards, working with cities to develop regional plans and arterial routes, and eventually overseeing all of the state's public works. Tallamy was an avid driver, averaging 40,000 miles a year behind the wheel. He'd planned and built the limited-access Thruway in six years, during which he'd demonstrated a passion for walking, too; he'd covered all of the expressway's 427 miles between New York City and Buffalo on foot.

Tallamy wanted the job but had obligations in New York that would keep him there for several months. For the interim, Eisenhower appointed another well-known engineer, John A. Volpe of Massachusetts, who'd built an international construction company from scratch before serving three years as his state's public works chief. Volpe was sworn in with Ike holding the Bible and thus became the first person in what remains today the nation's highest highway post, the equivalent to an assistant secretary. Consulting all the while with Tallamy, Volpe rejiggered the bureau to better shoulder its new, unwieldy responsibilities. More decisions would fall to the field offices, ensuring limber response to state needs. Departments were split up, functions shifted. And on January 1, 1957, Frank Turner got a promotion.

He was now deputy commissioner and chief engineer, second only to Curtiss among the bureau's career employees and in essence the agency's chief operating officer. Officially speaking, responsibility for the interstates might fall to the federal highway administrator, but as a practical matter, it was Turner's hide on the line.

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