A Road Revolution : Everybody's Benefit.
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By Henry Sturrney.
Revolutions in manners, customs and methods come slowly, but there can be no doubt, I think, that a revolution is taking place to-day in our entire road system, and that motoring is the cause of it. Centuries ago, when the Romans were in occupation of Britain, they understood road making much better than did our ancestors of a couple of centuries back. Although their road surfaces were not of the sandpapered order, their roads were sound at bottom. They fully understood the need for a sound foundation where heavy traffic had to be considered. I do not suppose that the heavy traffic of those days came anywhere near the heavy traffic of to-day, yet it must be remembered that the purpose for which the Romans built their roads was to facilitate military transport. With the departure of the Romans from our shores, the art of road making became forgotten, and our roads, under the Saxons and Normans, reverted very much to their former condition. Except where the Romans had already made sound roads, the highways and the byways of the country were little better than cart tracks through a field. With the advance of civilization in later centuries, there came the need for more-frequent and more-rapid inter-communication between the different parts of the country. A couple of centuries ago some sort of attention began to be given to our roads, and our great main highways began to be laid out. The method of construction was, however, still very crude and insufficient, until the advent of the stage coaches, and until the demand for speed, which these vehicles implied, called for a better consideration with regard to the whole question and especially with regard to the class of surfacing.
A century back, MacAdam came along and introduced the system of road surfacing which bears his name and which is universal to-day, though, I fear, in many instances it is sadly marred in actual execution. This system has served us well until late years, although the advent of the railway in the early part of the last century, by removing the bulk of both the heavy and the fast, traffic from our highways, caused the science and the art of road making for a time to become little more than legendary.
With the popularization of the motor vehicle within the last decade, our neglected highways have once more come in for serious consideration, as they have also once more become useful aids to the locomotion of the public. Apart altogether from the dust question, which has possibly been the principal exciting cause for much of the attention which is being given to roads to-day, the need for a morelasting and hence a more-economic system has been brought home to us. Whilst horse owners have been content to put up with bad roads and have not seen the importance of good ones in regard to the wear and tear upon their own rolling stock, the motor engineer has recognized that unevenness of road surface means two things to the motorcar user. It means, in short, increased vibrative effect upon the material used in construction of the mechanism and, as the result of this, increased wear and tear of parts, more frequent fractures, and hence increased up-keep expenditure. This same specialist has also realized the effect upon propulsive eftort, which the horse owner has largely overlooked, because it has never been brought home to him by the direct expenditure upon additional fuel or fodder.
When it is remembered that every inequality of the road surface means the raising of weight to overcome it, either by the lifting of the wheel out of the hole into which it has sunk, or by the lifting of the wheel over the obstacle which is in front of it—and with the wheel the weight which is super-imposed upon it, it will be readily seen that it requires more power to propel a motor vehicle over a rough road than over a smooth one. More power means
more petrol, and, when we come to consider the effect upon the horse, it simply means that the animal is unable to haul its load so great a distance under the bad conditions, for, unlike the mechanical horse, the animal has only a limited amount of power available. Good roads, therefore, are as important to the horse user as to the employer of the motor vehicle. Anything, therefore, which tends to improve road surfaces, whilst beneficial to us, is at the same -time equally beneficial to the user of horse haulage, if he only has the sense to see it. Whether he has or no. however, the fact remains that the position, by reason largely of the constant agitation of the motorist and of motoring bodies, is at last being appreciated by those in authority, and a revolution of far-reaching importance is now taking place upon our highways. The Editor of TIM COMMERCIAL Moron has always been to the fore in urging upon his readers the importance of the road question upon motor haulage, and it must be extremely gratifying to him and to those others who have apparently for years been " beating the air," to find that, at last, their efforts are being successful.
The revolution which is taking place is a striking one, for it is no less than an entire alteration in the main principles of road construction. Until the past twelve months it could hardly be said that anything more than experiments had been carried out, but the results attained during the past few years have to-day resulted in a recognition of the insufficiency of the system by which road surfaces have been bound together hitherto. Whilst, in the last quarter-century, the steam road-roller has greatly facilitated road-making work, the actual material used has been pretty much the same for generations. The earth and grit, and the finer particles of road material with which the stones are intermixed, have been bound together only by copious supplies of water and heavy pressure, with the result that the impact of heavy bodies such as the wheels of iron-shod carts and the blows from the hoofs of horses, have broken up the road surface into holes. The disturbance of the smaller particles of material has facilitated their easy distribution over the surface of the road by traffic, and thence into the air as dust by the suction arising from the passing of motor vehicles. It is now, further, recognized that, whilst motor vehicles accentuate and call attention to this dust, it is in the accentuation and completion of the work done by others that their principal offence lies, and that, if anything is to be done at all which can be permanently beneficial, it must be something which will minimize or entirely prevent this disturbance and scattering of the finer and worn portions of the road surface.
It is also recognized that every hole in the road surface becomes a receptacle for water in time of rain, and that water, sinking in to the road surface, becomes, in time of frost, a powerfully-destructive and disintegrating material, breaking up the road surface and rendering it still more easy of attack by the wheels and hoofs above alluded to. " Pot-holes" are the beginning of the trouble.
The remedy has at last been found in the use, instead of water as -the binding material, of tarry or bituminous substances, which are themselves impervious to water. Whilst it is true that no universally-recognized system has yet been adopted throughout the country, the principle of making the road surface impermeable by water, and hence waterproof, is to-day fully recognized by the leading road engineers of the country, and, what is more, by those who are identified with the newly-established Road Board, with the results that the revolution in our road system throughout the country has already begun.
Tt matters not whether the immediate method adopted be the mere surface treatment of the road with tar or
some similar material, or the re-making of the surface itself with water-proof material, the result is the same. Although the former method is but a temporary palliative, in order to reduce the dust nuisance in the summer, the water-proofing effect is the same. Experience, too, has shown that, where the road surface is waterproof right through, the life of the road is materially increased. Although first cost may be greater, upkeep expenditure is less, so that the revolution which we have now entered upon does not necessarily become one of greater expense to the taxpayers. As knowledge of this subject increases and there arises a better acquaintance with methods of working, it is, I think, practically certain, that the cost of upkeep to the country will in the future he considerably reduced from the figures of the past. There certainly can be no two opinions about it that the effect of wear and tear on motor vehicles, including tire wear, will be likewise materially decreased.
At present, so far as re-surfacing with waterproof material goes, we have two broad principles to work upon. The older method of tarmac is that in which the road metal, together with the binding material, is impregnated with a tarry substance and is laid direct upon the road and rolled in, The modern method, which appears likely to come very much to the front in the near future, is that according to which the finer binding material only is so treated. A waterproof paste, or pudding, which is thus formed, is first laid down upon the road surface and a layer of ordinary road metal is rolled into it, under ths pressure of a heavy roller. The chief difference between these two systems is that, whereas in the first case the road metal used is furnace slag or other porous material, the treatment results in filling the pores of the road metal itself with a tarry substance, by the other method, ordin
ary good-class road metal is used, which is held in place in the tarry matrix, from which it cannot be disturbed by the passing kick of a horse, as on a water-bound road.
There is a further difference between the two in that, whereas the former is waterproof throughout its substance and over every inch of its surface, the latter is not waterproof so far as those portions of the road are concerned which are formed by the several pieces of road metal which find themselves on the surface. This solid road metal itself, however, is, if the right material has been used, practically non-absorbent, but the water, although not sinking through the road surface, does not remain upon it until evaporated. Hence, in the winter weather, the road does not become a slippery sheet of ice, dangerous to the foot-hold of horses. So that, when the exigencies of horse traffic are considered—and they have to be considered, of course—in winter time, at any rate, this form of surfacing presents a better foothold and is consequently safer. So far as motor vehicles are concerned, the small roughened spots of road metal serve as oases in a desert of slime, which latter may possibly, by neglect, be allowed to accumulate, and which, on an entirely-polished waterproof surface is, in winter time, productive of that danger and bugbear to the motor vehicle, side-slip.
Now the extreme importance of this revolution in road methods to the motoring community—and particularly to the commercial-motor user—should be recognized by all. As the user of commercial-motor vehicles has usually some local influence—being, generally, a considerable employer of labour and oftentimes finding a seat upon the local council—I hope that all users of industrial vehicle's in this country will unite their forces in urging ahead the rapid adoption of the new principles throughout the districts in which they do business.