MODERN TRAFFIC.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 328, 15 October 1908, Page 7

MODERN TRAFFIC.

HOW TO MAKE THE ROADS ADEQUATE CONCRESS IN PARIS. MOTORS AND THE DUST EVIL. (BT TELEQEira—FBESS ASSOCIATION —COriRIOHT.} Paris, October 13. An important congress lias opened in Paris. Representatives of 2!) Governments are participating. The congress will study the best means of adapting roads to the conditions of modern traffic. CONSTRUCTION AND TRAFFIC. The International Road Congress which has now assembled at Paris, on the initiative of the French Government, will represent (ho most serious effort yet made to solve the new highways problem, in the light of motor experience. The congress is the outcome of the labours of the French Anti-Dust League, of which Dr. Guglielminetti is general secretary, in which capacity he attended the Roads Improvement Association's experiments in May this year. Invitations to the congress have been sent to foregoing Governments, which the requested to appoint several competent men as delegates. It is also expected that the congress will lay down that the main method of solving the problem must be to improve the roads. Even the most considerate motor-driver cannot help raising the dust in many roads, however careful he may be. The British delegates to the congress inelude such well-known personages as Lord Montagu, of Beaulieu, the Hon. C. S. Rolls, Colonel Crompton, Dr. Hele-Shaw, and Mr. Rees Jeffreys. The congress will sit for a week, and the broad outline of the points to be debated shows its scope:

Fiest Division.—Construction and Maintenance. 1. The road as it now is. 2. How roads are made. 3. How to combat wear and dust, 4. The road of the future. Second and Working, 1. How the new conveyances affect the highways. 2. How the highways affect the vehicles. 3. Road signs. 4. The various kinds of mechanical road car- • riages. There will also be an exhibition of'road mating and repairing materials, of wheels, tyres, and anti-skid appliances, and of all matters relating to road improvement. Excursions will be arranged—one of them to Nice—to visit specially-prepared roads. Various international committees have been for some months collecting and arranging information, and the matter will be thrashed out in all its bearings as has never before been done. One of the most interesting papers in the British section -will be that read by Mr. H. P. Maybury, the surveyor for the county of Kent. ICont has led the way in solving the dust problem. Mr. Maybury tells the secret of its good roads. Friable materials havo been almost entirely abandoned for'the main arteries, and the road metal has been bought not only from tho best hard-stone quarries in the United Kingdom, but also from Franco, Belgium, Germany, and Norway. To maintain and improve GOO miles of roads tho Kent Council has purchased from 20,000 to 30,000 tons of local stone and -70,000 tons of the hardest stone each year.