On this day, 1956, the US Congress approved the 1956 Federal Highway Act! The Federal Highway Act assigned 30 billion dollars for the building of about 41.000 miles of interstate highways! The act was also known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The term “Defense” was included for two reasons. The first reason is because partially the funds were taken from the defense funds. The second reason was because most of the U.S Air Force bases have a straight link to the highway system.
However, there were some pressing questions in whether the act should pass or not. One of them was the exact location of the highways. And the other was how much of the costs the Federal government would have to cover versus the individual states. The 1956 Federal Highway Act is the biggest construction project in its time!
