DEATH:The Interstate ‘Father’ Frank Turner

In 1950 Turner returned to Wash DC to become assistant to Thomas H MacDonald, who was as longlived and dominant a figure to US roads as J Edgar Hoover was to the FBI. Turner was assigned to be secretary to the Clay committee, president Eisenhower’s advisory group on an interstate highway system. Turner’s generation of BPR officials were unfortunately anti-toll ideologues. “America’s Highways 1776-1976" the official history of the FHWA published in 1976 for the bicentenniary, refers to toll promoters as a “class of highway parasite” as “cliques” seeking a “stranglehold” (p116) and refers elsewhere to toll road advocates as “extremists.” Turner is nowhere on record using such marxist invective against tolls, but the book was commissioned in his final years as federal highway administrator so one has to fault him for signing off on this kind of anti-tolls trash. The case can be made that the Bureau of Public Roads was disloyal to the administration in working against tolls at a critical point in the history of roads in the US.

President Eisenhower himself was a ditherer on the issue, though initially he apparently favored toll financing for an interstate highway system. Quite strongly in favor of tolls was Ike’s treasury secretary, his chairman of economic advisers, and a leading aide presidential Stewart Bragdon. (Tom Lewis, ‘DIVIDED HIGHWAYS’ p115). A House Committee on Roads also favored toll-interstates. They were thwarted by Sen Harry Byrd, chair Senate Finance Committee who was determinedly opposed to the necessary bond financing. With an impasse over financing the BPR rather disgracefully lobbied with congressmen using future highways as political ‘pork’ to gain support for a highway trust fund and the gas taxes that are still an integral part of US highway funding. Tom Lewis relates how a BPR-produced “Yellow Book” with maps of proposed routes of the interstates swung key votes in the run up to the vote that produced the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956: “Sioux Falls a city that numbered 52,696... had its own beltway. Lovre (Rep SD) had voted against the (gas tax) bill in 1955. Now that Sioux Falls would be surrounded by construction jobs and concrete, how could he resist? The Yellow Book had given Lovre a reason (to switch) his vote...” (p121) Shusterism raised its ugly head well before Shuster himself arrived in DC!

It is unclear that Turner himself was involved in that ugly encouragement of favor-trading. The FHWA history notes that from 1957 to 1967, the glory years of construction of the interstate system, Turner was deputy head of BPR and its chief engineer and so he was primarily responsible for the successful launch of the interstate system once it had been funded with the gas tax. Says AMERICA’S HIGHWAYS 1776-1976: “More than any other single individual, (Turner) may be said to be the ‘Father’ of the Interstate Highway System.” (p186) He was head of BPR 1967 to 1969 and the first Federal Highway Administrator 1969 to 1972. Turner apparently did his best to limit the growth of Shusterism in his day. A great man! (Richard Weingroff FHWA 202 366 4856)