THE EVOLUTION OF THE MOTOR ROAD.
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1.—A Brief Retrospect.
THE KNOWLEDGE of the average roadfarer concerning the past history of our roads on the one hand, and the latest methods of road construction on the other, is generally somewhat vague, and he would, if put to it, probably visualize the matter by recalling the image of old "Stone-Cracker John" in the popular song quoted alongside.
"Stone-0 r a ck er John" with his somewhat testy opinion of motoring has faded into the past as an employee of the modern highway authority, although the work that he and his kind accomplished under the principles evolved by Telford and Macadam represented a vast improvement upon the conditions ofthings which obtained in the Middle Ages and right on to the 16th century, when public road vehicles first became general. The starting point for any consideration of the evolution of the modern road is, of course, the excel lent work done by our old friends the Romans when our respected ancestors were going about clad in a simple attire which consisted for the most part of woad tattooing. The Romans, in their direct practical fashion, .constructed roads in this country, not with the.devious windings which are such a charming feature of English landscape from the standpoint of the artist, and have been the cause of so many accidents from the standpoint of the motor driver, but straightly from point to point. There is a story of a Russian emperor who, when consulted as to the route of the Petrograd-Moscow Railway, took a rule and a pencil and, marking a long straight line on the map, said, "Make it so ! " This was very much the principle on which the Romans carried out their road work. The same thoroughness was manifested in the solidity of construction employed. The foundation was literally built with two
or three courses of slabs of stone •embcdded in mortar, on which the surface of pavement blocks was laid, and joined up with the mortar The road thus constructed was often 3 ft. in thickness and about 14 ft. in c30 width. Stone edges or kerbs were laid, and a footpath on each side, generally half t h e width of the road, was provided. These footpaths, however, were not paved, and were on a lower level than the actual road surface. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 1) gives a fair idea of their construction.
These Roman highways fell into decay in the Middle Ages. It was nobody's business to see to their upkeep, and as they became frequently appropriated
broken up the material was for buildings. During the Norman and Saxon periods various new roads were made, some of them designed as routes by which pilgrims travelled to the various shrines in the country, but both in these times and later on in the Tudor and Stuart periods, the work accomplished
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fect of a very low standard, and such narrow roads as were constructed did not receive much attention in the way of upkeep.
When vehicular traffic became generally introduced by the end of the 16th century the roads were quite unsuitable for the traffic which was displacing the saddle-horse and pack-horse. Consequently the legislature, having to choose between bringing the roads up to the new standard or limiting the requirements of wheel traffic, passed certain Acts of Parliament restricting the number of horses to be used in such vehicles, and the weights to be carried, and regulating the widths of the wheels !
Down to the middle of the lath century, such roads
as existed were unworthy of the name, consisting us they did for the most part of hilly, winding tracks. The sole method of finding funds to keep them in repair, even up to the low standard which then obtained, was by local taxation. Then came the creation of various turnpike trusts, a system peculiar to this country, under which gates and barriers were set up on the road,' and travellers using it were charged certain fees, which were supposed to be devoted to the repair and upkeep of the highway. The system did not work well, however. No real structural work was attempted, and such repairs as were effected took the simple form of dumping down on the alleged road any old material that happened tO be nearest, leaving the subsequent traffic to consolidate it into some semblance of surface.. The accompanying sketches show how these roads became worn, and the result when repaired by the primitive method indicated in Fig. 2b. It will be seen that the so-called repair consisted in.heaping up the material on the centre of the road, with a dangerously curved "camber," the idea being to secure efficient drainage, and for gafety's sake vehicles were forced to keep to the crown of the road, so that it was soon worn again into the old deep ruts shown in Fig. 2a.
Certain laws were passed stipulating for definite widths of wheels, some of which, the slant, conical wheels of the old wagons, had a rolling width of 16 inches. The idea underlying these regulations apparently wa§ that the wider the wheel the less damage it did, and the tolls were framed on a sliding scale according to the width, narrow wheels being supposed to do the most damage to the road.
Eventually, however, out of much muddle-headed confusion, matters were simplified by the passing of the Highway Act of 1835, which annulled most of the cumbrous restrictions on traffic which had grown up before, including the complicated system of turnpike trusts, which, primarily intended to maintain and improve the roads with the money obtained from the tolls, had proved very ineffectual from this standpoint.
This Act authorized local authorities to appoint surveyors and to levy rates for road construction and maintenance, and was the foundation of highway legislation and practice as they exist to-day.
The father of modern roads was James L. IVIacadam, whose name abides to this day in the system which he evolved about 1816, when in control of the roads of Bristol. His theory—which a century's experience has proved to be sound—was that instead of loose, rounded gravel, angular broken stone should be used, the sharp angular faces of which should lock together and so render them immovable. Fig. 3 shows in diagram form the theory mentioned, from which it will be seen how the faces of each angular fragment of , stone dovetail in, as it were, with the others, and surface pressure would only tend to consolidate them instead of (as in the case of loose, rounded stones) dis persing them and driving ruts in the road. Macadam abolished the excessive and dangerous cambers refered to, and laid an even course of small pieces of broken stone or "metal," about 2 ins, in diameter, to a depth of about 10 ins. Finer material was sprinkled on top, and the subsequent traffic had the effect of computing and consolidating the road into a hard durable highway. No steam rollers were then employed, as these did not make an appearance until 1863, and it was long before the practice of rolling was accepted as a matter of course in road work on account of the expense entailed.
Contemporary with Macadam and his valuable work, Telford was operating on similar lines in Scotland. He constructed the high road from London to Holyhead and Liverpool, and the Great North Road familiar to cyclists,' motormen and other wayfarers. While endorsing Macadam's method of construction and reduction of camber,he also showed high engineering ability in iaying out new roads by avoiding steep inclines without making his highways Undidy circuitous.
As a result of the labours of Telford and Macadam and their followers, there were 160,000 miles of good metalled roads constructed on their system by the year 1870. London, of course, was well represented in these improvements.
I remember as a boy reading an old illustrated "Comic History of London," in which it was recorded that "the courtiers of good. King Lud (immortalized in Ludgate Circus), observing the sad state of London buildings at that time remarked, "Good Lud, the city wants rebuilding." To which the monarch, after the jovial manner of his times, replied, "Good lud! So it does !" and issued orders for the thing to be done forthwith. Something of this sort occurred in regard to London's streets in 1532, when the first recorded act for improving them was passed, for the chronicles of that time state frankly that the streets were "very fonl'and full of pits and sloughs, so as to be mighty perillous and noyous for all the King's subjects."