EXPENDITURE FROM THE ROAD FUND.
Page 43
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The Continuous Discovery of New Grounds for Claims Upon the Fund.
By Onyx."
THERE is every indication that more and more demands upon the Road Fund will arise under both old and new divisions of expenditure. Improvement, the original basis of application in 1910, was for some years very narrowly construed by the late Sir George Gibb when Chairman of the Road Board. The first widening of that limiting condition was found in accelerated repairs, and this almost unconsciously merges into tire proportional maintenance grants of 50 per cent. for Class I and 25 per cent. for Class II roads.
Established Demands.
Improvement and proportional maintenance grants are by no means the only classes of demand upon the Road Fund which may be termed established. The practice of charging some or all of the scavenging and other public health services, such as watering, is of serious account, although Sir Henry Maybury was successful a few years ago in forcing through a system of analysed returns and statistics which checked—if it did not eliminate—various abuses of no mean order.
Then one has the regular practice of charging footways and sidewalks to highways, presumably on the ground that wheeled traffic on the carriageway generally reaches a stage of development at which such further and distinct provision for the pedestrian becomes consequential.
A Transition Stage.
Acceptance of the principle of consequential responsibility, which it is difficult to rebut, opens the door to a variety of additional debits against the Road Fund, some actual and others more or less potential for the present. Of the actualities, one may refer to the preparation of tracks for horsemen on the roadside verges (as in Gloucestershire), to the rehousing of persons displaced by• the removal of dangerous corners or the 'widening of narrow lengths of through routes in urban areas, and to the sanctioning of maintenance grants for contiguous parallel highways where arterial road construction (as between Reigate and-Dorking) in part leaves, and in part relieves, the older traffic stream. Grants for ferries are in a category somewhat comparable to that of bridges, in that both relieve the highways by shortening the lengths of sundry and numerous journeys.
The existence of a transition stage is, perhaps, best exemplified by reference to the controversy now raging in a number of districts between purely highway and purely. farming interests. This concerns the extensive damage admitted to be caused and alleged to be done by the seeding of uncut weeds at the sides of new arterial roads. Agricultural committees in several counties have within the past two months shown much determination to obtain redress. They have their eye on the Road Fund, the financial backing of which stands behind the arterial roads.' Thus, in respect of rural and semi-rural areas, where new arterial roads of sufficient width to have sidewalks are laid down, the Road Fund must pay half the cost of weeding them. It will probably be a not inconsiderable annual charge.
More Provision for Pedestrians.
Sidewalks on arterial roads are proving costly and wasteful on their present scale. They are in many cases of widths appropriate to leading shopping streets ! The time may come, 20 and more years hence, when housing and estate developments will bring into being that succession of buildings on the new frontages, with a sufficiency of back-land exploitation, to call for these spacious pavements for pedestrian traffic, but it cannot be economical to anticipate those days now. The needful widths, possibly, can be reserved in some less costly fashion The need of more provision for pedestrians on ordinary country roads seems, however, to be insistent. The matter is one of degree. Motor traffic is literally forcing the horse and the walker to the hedge and to the wall—at least, very largely, so far as comfort goes, off the carriageway. That carriageway, be it well noted, in Great Britain has been the prescriptive right of the pedestrian for centuries. Times may have changed,' but the law has remained. What is to be the solution?
How, by whom and at whose cost is the provision to be made? Are pedestrians less costly to motorists at large, as now, on rural roads, or as they might be on sidewalks provided in part by recourse to votes from the Road Fund? What guarantee can there be that new sidewalks would be used? Da not pedestrians, as a rule, prefer to walk on the road—on the carriageway?
Legislation Essential.
The growth of motor traffic must in the very near future bring about legislation defining and" modifying the unrestrained liberty of pedestrians. There is already, thanks to the almost universal use of motors by the public at large, a sensible measure of appreciation of this necessity. Parliament, as the reflector of the general sense of the community, cannot for long ignore the case for recognition in law of changes effected in fact. It should, for example, be made an offence, punishable by a smart fine, for anybody wilfully or negligently to throw, drop or leave a bottle or nail, or the like, on any highway.
Common interest in clean and safe road surfaces is undeniable. There is a like cOmmon interest in the safety of the pedestrian. The motorist's interest in him is only selfish to a very small extent, and that not, as is too widely supposed, due to a desire to have him out of the way.
No; any selfishness on the part of the average driver is founded upon an innate aversion to harming a fellow-being and to a knowledge of the great risks which are taken by the average pedestrian, who all too often appears to wish to thrust himself into danger.
Might it not be of advantage if readers of The Commercial Motor took the opportunity to express their opinions upon desirable legislative proposals for the
better regulation of pedestrian traffic? It would , appear that such regulation, differing in all likelihood • for town and country as regards the manner and mode of crossing the road, has ,become a necessary corollary to the considerable 'volume of wheeled traffic regulations.