tor what is intended to be a factual,

tor what is intended to be a factual, non-prejudiced report on the relative value of the highways to various classes of users, and the relative wear-and-tear these classes cause. The report is due by January 3, 1961, as a guide to future federal highway tax policies, which are the concern of the Committee on Ways and Means, on which 1 serve. *•

Congress instituted this protracted and detailed study in an attempt to pick the facts out of the continuing arguments over the fairness of existing road taxes. For example, just bow much more wear does the truck and bus traffic on a particular road cause than the private automobile traffic on the same road? Or, how important to the Nation as a whole is it that a superhighway be built, with funds supplied by all of the Nation’s taxpayers, to link certain cities?

If the forthcoming report furni'hcs the information' expected of it, it should be of substantial value, not only to the tax committees of Congress, but also to State and hx'al authorities who are sharing the headaches of trying to find enough public money to build and repair streets and roads capable of moving efficiently the swelling streams of private and commercial vehicles.

Hut, back to the electric brains, as we risk the comment that, “those fellows in Washington are getting ■r-'d' to tax us bv machine”:

The Secretary of Commerce's progress report states:

“The design of a computer program i- nearly complete, and much of the information has been processed and stored, the major elements of data to be fed into the machines are as follows

“1. Vehicle and travel data (predicted 1964) :

(a) Classified by type and registered gross weight, the travel being subdivided by highway system and bv traffic-volume group;

(b) Travel expressed in (1) axle-miles of travel in each of several class intervals of axle load and (2) vehicle-miles of travel in each of several class intervals of operating gross weight.

"2. Program expenditure data, similarly subdivided by highway