The Roadway of the Future

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Roadway of the Future

( t CARCELY anything has more care and attention lavished upon l//* it than the modern road.” writes Mr. H. Courtney Bryson in the January issue of “Discovery." It is an outward and visible sign ' J of an inward and diverse complexity. It extends hither mid thither, entering each life and almost each action. It is laid down with care and rolled with precision. We try and make tilings easy for the road by cutting off corners and levelling it out. We harden its surface and render it waterproof. We wasli it and dry it. We hedge it about and make laws concerning it. ...

“The roadway of the future will not be one whit less important than that of today, even though aerial traffic bears an increasingly great load. The unpleasant hardness and cracking of concrete, the short life of the wood-block surface, the cold flow and seasonal variation of the bituminous surface, and the disadvantages of rubber will probably be overcome in the future by the adoption of some form of synthetic resin as the surfacing material.

“It is extremely unlikely that anything much better than concrete will ever be discovered for the foundation. On this ferro-concrete lied, suitably keyed, will be laid a compound with a synthetic resin base, which will have the same coefficient of expansion as the concrete. The peculiarity of the resin will lie in the fact that it will polymerize under the action of ultraviolet rays instead of the more usual action of heat. “Laboratory experiment amply demonstrates that this can be achieved.

Furthermore, the principal filler of the resin will be an abrasive substance of sufficient hardness to form a suitable grip for the wheels, however wet the road. The proportion of this abrasive will be so adjusted as to went evenly with the resin, and present a constant surface of the proper degrei of roughness. ' Further novelty will be introduced by the incorporation ot a luminous material. The mixture will be loaded into huge tanks on wheel* in the dark, and then extruded during the day from slot-like orifices situ ated as a fan in the rear of the vehicle, followed by a gigantic levelling-oil knife, the shape of the camber of the road. Bright sunlight would hardet the resin in twenty minutes. A dull day would require twenty or thirty times this period

“This road will benefit everybody. Its bard, impermeable and weathe> resisting surface will never suffer from cold How, however many lorries try to push it into transverse ridges. The resin will never crack. Its crushing strength will be high, its surface always be uniform, and at night it will save the ratepayers money for illumination. In any case our present meanof illumination, by means of a red-hot hair-pin inside a glass-hottie, stuck on a pole, is so inefficient that it is bound to die out. Ninety per cent, of the energy is wasted.

“On this road surface even a mouse will show up. The air pilot, too, will find night-llying greatly simplified; the darker the night the more easily would the sinuous routes be distinguished, and towns would be recognized by the character of the roads leading to them.” 1