ROAD MAKING.

Shannon News, 17 August 1923, Page 3

ROAD MAKING.

MODERN METHODS. MOTOR TRANSPORT PROBLEM. The following article from the Road maker .England) will well repay per usal, especially at the present junc lure, when the question of good r-oadi looms large in the Dominion: — Road finance is. a burning questior at the present moment. It conies uj again and again at county counci meetings all over the country. Tin rate for road maintenance bulks toe largely in the country rate for rura; ratepayers to. be, indifferent to it. A ■ few weeks, ago Lieutenant-Colon ej • Hilder, the Conservative member foi South-East ESsex, carried by a big majority (with the Government whips “off”) amotion calling for a widei allocation of the proceeds from the taxation of motor vehicles. The financial question is not one that can be settled easily or dogmatically. Roads, are necessary. There is no question of that. Look at a mlap of England and compare the close network of roads with the widely separated lines of railways. Thrailways are the great arteries, the roads are the smaller arteries, and capillaries which carry the life blood in and out to every part of the body of the land. Farm and factory alike depend on the road to get their.materials -in and their produce out. It is admitted by the highest experts that the road is the only means by which (economical distribution can he accomplished in this country. Tbe quality of the roads is therefore a naional interest and a local interest. Bad roads or poor roads are costly for all road transport and especially for motor transport, which is now from 70 to 75 per cent, of the traffic ol' what one may call the) capillary roads on which farm and factory depend. ' Fafmers and rural ratepayers naturally resent paying the heavy cost ,of maintaining some roads which aiv largely used fo'r through traffic winch does not directly serve their interests. It is impossible .to assert tha = they are wrong in this, for the question of load finance is. a very complicated economic problem. But some observations may be made, not dogmatically, but by way of suggesting- counter-considerations. In strict economics, no doubt, the cost of road maintenance should be borne proportionately by, the traffic that- uses the roads But we cannot return to the turnpike in these hurried days, am a rougher and easier method must be used. The county rate is heavy, bui county rates generally are light, compared' with town rates. The gout road to which he has to contribute so much provides the rural ratepayei with the means by which he gets his produce, quickly and cheaply to town —tax free—as a market. He is not asked to contribute to the rates o-J that, market, much higher than ms own' or even to its extremely costly paved roads. His land is enhanced In value wherever the g 0( -><l countiv road goes. ,A rough balance of justice and economic fairness is stiuck—not, - certainly, such as would satis.y an economic purist, but as this woi Id goes, not so bad. Yet the position is wholly unsatisfactory and for one plain reason, and that partly an economic and partly an engineering reason, llie county -ratepayer is paying an enormous upkeep cost for roads which are continually being battered to pieces, lie average 'road with the. most excellent surface is not fit: to stand the strain off modern motor transport, it is continually being destroyed and re-

made. The whole, financial secret, as Lord' Montagu of Beaulieu, has perceived, is in capital expenditure make roads, .which, like the Roman roads, will be permanent m their essential structure, stronger, not weaker than the traffic they have bear, and costing little for maintenance except the comparatively triVia a!U!l °n ia required' for peeping up the topdressing of smooth and dustless surface. The cost of this service oi the road’s is negligible. The, question is how the capital for laying such luting roads should be raised. Loiu Montagu of Beaulieu has highway Joans, the interest on w ' > it must be assumed, would be: much Ire than covered by the saving on upkeep. But the roads soconstmcted mu'st be scientific roods sure of permanence and free Irani The stant burden and fundamental repan and reconstruction. This indeed, is the essence oi the problem-roads that m J Pel f ti-ons Will bear the baffle, not foi a season, but for years—-roads so firm and strong that .the able and economic traffic cannot a. s troy them. This is well within resources of applied but he anv -other of the resources of applied science it needs, capital expenditure. Here thfife is an evident case -or national'help to the local authorities. It is being given for the■ that is being accelerated m oraer absorb a proportion of t^ e :^ ,n;p o J{ pd The most up-o-date lorms o modern: road-making can be larp almost entirely—carried out by unskilled labour, and unskilled labour is almost all uneuv nloyed men can be drawn. But tha we Y must hope is. a transient + ifMi and whatever the state of em olowlnt i be in more prosperous K the need tor capital expenditme SSnn «STS H desirable, to tußl ba ? tid l of^XX n £ rt mS “at not the invading to .nt vue wh ich are now ecoweight and sp investor looks nomically the “ twenty or thirty justification of would seem to ne ue •> Government highway lo»s of £*& would save *eir cost u. V£s" Gov^ntnent h ® r/erts have /to "verv nian’s There must, be wayt° e ro . . home, farm or of roods, mv mains only the sysH*™ to ful qi th.a.l pmdtice d the roads are

of Telford and Macadam, when all transport was horse transport. No one would think it sensible to conduct our railways as if they were still horse-drawn tramways on woodon -rails. It. is no more reasonable) to build our roads as if they were still to serve only the comparatively light horse-drawn' traffic of twenty years ago. Once again it is not a question of surface, hut Qf foundations,.