County Highway Planning

Adequate highways are of vital concern to every citizen of Indiana. They are an integral part of modern life. They provide the most impor­ tant means of bringing people together— of permitting anyone to live a full and happy life. Providing adequate highways within the limitations of funds provided, knowledge available and time required is the respon­ sibility which the public has assigned through its various units of govern­ ment to individuals. One of the objectives of the Highway Extension and Research Project for Indiana Counties since its inception five years ago has been the development of tools and techniques which would permit those responsible for county highways to provide adequate county roads. Such provision involves wise planning, adequate design, proper construction, correct operation and continuous maintenance. Since the first of these phases to an adequate highway system is planning, H ERPIC has always maintained a major interest in planning procedures which county high­ way authorities should employ. A series of county highway planning manuals is being developed which will assist in this planning process. They will soon be available and will cover county highway classification and highway standards, county highway identification, county highway inventory and county highway improvement priorities. The development of these manuals, however, has resulted in the realization that the real deterrent to good county highway planning is the lack of a full appreciation on the part of many highway authorities of the need for an organized highway planning effort at the county level. Part of this feeling exists because all counties do some planning. One does not direct that a certain road be improved without some considera­ tion of how the improvement compares with other needed improvements, and other such “ common sense” analyses. But unless such an analysis has been made in an organized manner, with all the facts at hand and by persons with appropriate technical knowledge, the planning will be incomplete and the resulting improvement may not be the correct one. Dr. Arthur H. Compton, one of the world’s greatest scientists and a Nobel Prize winner, once told of an incident that happened to his