THE FUTURE OF ROADS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 271, 17 January 1929, Page 4

THE FUTURE OF ROADS.

THE holidays have the effect of bringing to the fore the road problem. Complaints have been made of the state of roads, of the inability to stand the strain of constant traffic. The growth of motor traffic continues, and the extension is not merely confined to numbers. With it must be included the increase in heavier vehicles and higher powered cars. Sooner or later there will be a clash between the motorists and local authorities. Restrictions as to speed or the weight of the load will not solve the problem. It can only be a temporary expedient. The experience in Great Britain or any other country is of importance to New Zealand. -Of course the conditions there are much more intense. An article in a- recent number of the London Spectator is of particular interest. Showing the state of affairs in Great Britain it is recorded that “ already at week-ends most of the roads in London and other big cities are so congested that the speed of motor vehicles is reduced to ten or fifteen miles per hour, and the crowding is so great in some places that extra police have to be employed to direct the traffic, while it is almost impossible for persons on foot or with vehicles to cross a main road, cwing to the procession of cars so close to one another being continuous. And if the railways are going to use their road powers there will be .more and more public service vehicles every year increasing the congestion.”

Accepting as a basis that there must be fast through traffic, just as the railways run expresses, some pertinent suggestions are made which are worthy of consideration by the authorities in New Zealand, who are controlling the main highways. “ As to the roads of the future, it will be desirable that the main thoroughfares should. not be encumbered by houses, villages or groups of buildings along their margins. Already many of the new exits from London are being obstructed by trade and private cars waiting outside houses, narrowing the space originally and specifically intended for the fast through traffic. Then, again, pedestrians are constantly increasing on these special roads; they wifi not use the footpaths by the sides, but walk in the road. If new houses are to be built, and new aggregations of population are to take place near these new roads, connections should he by roads leading from the main trunk roads, at. the distance of at least a quarter of a mile, let us say, from the main trunk road itself, in order both to assist through traffic, and at the same time to ensure peace and quiet to the dwellers in such houses.”

The point is stressed that in a few years’ time the traffic both by night and by day on trunk roads will inevitably produce continuous noise, and that it is just as foolish to ask people to live in future facing these great highways as it would be to build houses f abutting on main lines of railway, or opposite busy junctions as at Clapham or Willesden. “ Over a hundred years ago this aspect of main roads was perfectly understood. Great trunk roads, like the Great North road and the Holyhead road, built by Telford and Macadam, were laid out specially to avoid towns and villages, ard were not meant to open up residential districts, or to enable houses to be built on their margins. They were meant purely for the fast through traffic, and for the use of fast vehicles, chiefly mail coaches at that time.”

And, looking to the future, such roads, or at least the more important of them, are visualised as “ being lit by night throughout their length by powerfu l electric lamps, and divided into tracks for the slow, medium and fast traffic, defined by white lines or some easily visible material inserted in the pavement of the road itself. There will be bridges above or subways below for cross traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, so that everyone can pass over without risk. “ The critics may cavil and talk about these roads being racing tracbs. But such roads must come when the fuller development of the motor vehicle takes place. Indeed already we see the Autostrada in Italy from Milan to Varese the first 52 i miles of such a road. In France a ParisRiviera road on similar lines has already be°n planned, while in Italy a Naples, Rome, Florence and Turin* highway is being talked about, and there are several plans for motor roads in this' country also. 11 But the biggest problem in regard to roads to-day is not in connection with first and second-class highways, but how the third or unclassified roads are to be maintained. There are about 120,000 miles of these in Great Britain, and at least half of this mileage is kept up, often inefficiently and with much difficulty, at the cost of high local rates, by small urban and rural district councils. These public bodies are unwilling, and often unable, to spend more, and are compelled in some instances to spend less owing to pressure from their electors, the lo<ral ratepayers. . . . On some of these

purely country roads there is already as much traffic as th"rc used to be on the chief main roads twenty years ago, while the weight of vehicles is much greater. When hard stone is not employed for surfacing, local gravel will have to be used in future with tar or bitumen.”