Can Wood Pavement Compete with Up-to-date Modifications of Tarred Macadam or Tar-concrete ?
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Colonel R. E. Crompton, C.B., consulting adviser to the Road Board, does not agree with us that it is expedient to press the claims of wood pavement as the most-perfect form of road surface, which, in certain connections, the Editor of this journal did, at Brussels, in his paper before the Second International Road Congress. The paper and a short leader " are in the issue of the 4th ult.
We are by no means oblivious to the remarkable strides which have been made, more particularly in (;reat Rriiaiii and the United States, during the past few years, with regard to modifications of the macadam system of road construction. Steeping of the metalling before consolidation, and rolling with properly-selected tar liquors from which the lighter constituents have been expelled, to say nothing of Brodie's " pitch mac " system, which has proved its merits at Liverpool and elsewhere, are now arresting the attention of road engineers throughout the world. The old days of badly-laid water-bound macadam have gone for ever, in any progressive community, and there is no question that, by a combination between the points of Macadam's system of sizing and la lug and the intelligent application of a suitable bituminous or tarry matrix, an impervious road crust and body may be ob
tained at remarkably-low costs, and certainly at figures which are much below those which have to be incurred for the laying and maintenance of wood pavement. We had no desire to ignore or to belittle the claims of modern forms of tar macadam and its allied constructional systems, and we feel sure that a re-perusal of that section of the Brussels paper will show that argument was directed rather to indicate the combined superiority, of motorbuses and any approved form of road surfacing, over expensive tramway-track construction which left the side strips of the highway unimproved, whilst at the same time tending to concentrate ordinary wheeled traffic upon those unimproved widths. Since it can fairly be claimed, on behalf of tar macadam, in any one of its promising new forms, that an alternative to wood is at hand, we are most happy to welcome the existence of a choice that can only assist and simplify the problems which lay before the promoters of motorbus undertakings. Colonel Crompton, whom readers of Tee Comment:fat. MOTOR will, we feel sure, be pleased to know has recovered from a slight indisposition which has confined him to the house for the past few weeks, has approved the following summary of his views on this impertant topic.