program is making consistent and substantial progress. And we have
every reason to expect this gratifying performance to continue.

In the highway field, the progress that is being made to accelerate
construction of the important primary and expressway systems is
evident to anyone who drives through the State. In its five-year "go
roads" program, the State Roads Commission has embarked upon a
bold venture to save lives, time and money by giving the people of
Maryland a completed system of primary highways and expressways
by 1965.

Remarkable progress has been made in every section of the State
during the past year. In the Baltimore metropolitan area, the most
dramatic achievement is the bustling job being done to complete
the Baltimore Beltway, which we hope to open to traffic only a few
months after this session of the General Assembly is adjourned. In
the burgeoning suburbs of Washington, annoying caps in the radial
highway system have been filled and many troublesome commuter
bottlenecks eliminated. On the eastern shore, U. S. Route 50 will be
dualized as far as Cambridge this year, the Salisbury Thruway will
be opened during this session, and progress is being made in the
dualization of U. S. Routes 13 and 301. In Western Maryland, the
difficult U. S. Route 40 west of Hancock is rapidly being reconstructed.
Already the roadway on the west slope of Martin mountain is open
to traffic, and construction equipment has moved into other sections
of the highway for more work this spring, summer and fall. The
Northeastern Expressway, which will be under contract by the end
of 1963, represents a giant step in the history of highway building
in Maryland.

We must not be content to rest upon our laurels in road construc-
tion, however. On a State-wide level, I have the State Roads Com-
mission to join with me in asking for legislative guidance at this
session on what should be done to accelerate the secondary road
system, as well as county and municipal road building throughout
the State.

This administration is making a sustained effort to reverse the
discouraging, long-continued decline in the production of oysters in
Maryland. The Department of Tidewater Fisheries last year planted
more than six million bushels of oyster shells on the public rocks and
seed areas and transplanted more than 200, 000 bushels of seed oysters.
Again this year, we expect to plant more than six million bushels of
shells, and we hope to transplant from a half million to a million
bushels of seed oysters—more than twice as much seed as has been

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