Highway Administration and Finance (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Highway Administration and Finance Highway Administration and Finance was written as a text and reference book on the management and economic phases of highway engineering. These constitute an increasingly important and exacting part of the procedure incident to the development of modern highway systems. A state or a municipal highway department is called upon to exercise three distinct types of administrative functions. One is to aid in securing legislative enactments that will afford an adequate legal basis for the work of the highway department, another is to assist in creating a sound financial system to meet the cost of highway improvement, the third, and most exacting, is to organize and supervise the activities of the staff engaged in the construction and maintenance of roads and pavements. The material presented herein is intended to serve as a basis for the study of these three phases of highway administration. It is contemplated that considerable collateral reading will accompany the use of the text and accordingly numerous references are inserted throughout the book. Those who wish to do no more than acquire a general knowledge of the subject will find the text itself sufficiently complete for that purpose. While this treatise is to a considerable extent a compilation of the literature of the subject, the authors have not hesitated to interject many observations based on their experience in their respective fields and continuous contacts with highway administration over a period of many years. At Ames, the subject matter of this treatise is the basis for two courses, each of three quarter credits, the one being on highway jurisprudence and finance, and the other on highway department organization and construction management. It is quite possible by limiting the amount of supplementary reading to cover the entire book in a course of three semester credits. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.