MACADAM CENTENARY

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 56, 29 November 1919, Page 11

MACADAM CENTENARY

A PIONEER OF MODERN ROADMAKING. Coinciding with a Roads Congress being liohl in London this month is the centennry of tlio famous system of loadnmking to which John Loudoun M'Adam, the Scottish etlgineer, gave his name. It was in ISI9 that M'Adam embodied in a' widely circulated pamphlet on scientific methods for tlio preservation of loads the practical results of observations and experiments which he had made through a, long course of years. Aiter a period of protracted warfare the' roads of every country aro in soro need of reconstruction. The roads of Great Britain, never very good during the eighteenth century, were in a truly deplorable state following the Napoleonic wws. . M'Adain, being a long-licuded Scotsman, devoted his attention not merely to lepairing but to preserving the Toads. Experiments made in tlio neighbourhood of his Ayrshire home and subsequently around Falmouth—where ho had taken up his residence in connection with a Navy victualling post—convinced M'Adam of the especial durability of that method of road-making now known throughout the world as "macadamisation." The method was widely adopted, M'Adam was voted a grant of .£IO,OOO and offered a knighthood, which ho declined, and appointed Surveyor-General of Metropolitan Roads. From the day of the "macaclamised" road British highways saw a steady and continuous improvement—at a continuously, increasing cost to the ratepayers. Today the greatest nroblem is not the preservation of the. roads—M'Adam substantially solved that—nor yet _ the provision of new transport facilities— tlio motor-bus and motor-lorry meet that aspect of the question—but the financing of highway construction and maintenance. It is the biggest question for the coming Roads Congress to discuss, the thorniest of all road questions for tho new British Ministry to handle., _ The development and future possibilities of motor transport vastly complicate the problem, for "local roads," such as tho Highway Boards of last century used to take under.ilieir benevolent but timid charge, practically no longer exist. Any' road in England wide enough to admit a motor-ear at all tends to become almost as traffic-ridden as the main road through the village street. County councils find their highway expenditure increasing at a rate out of all proportion to the national grants made by the moribund Road Board.