Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-01-17
STREET TOPICS.
CITIZENS DISCUSSING THEM WITH IN
CREASED INTEREST.
The Time Ripe For Action-Douglas
a. Lindley's Yiews-Unity of
Purpose Necessary.

There can be no doubt that the people of
this city are Just now taking lively inter-
est in the subject of street Improvements,
or, more correctly speaking. street reclama-
ton. Groups of citizens may be seen at
almost any hour of the day discussing the
subject, and on one point there seems to be
almost an unanimous opinion, namely:
that something should be done before
another rainy season comes on, to not only
make the streets passable. but to transform
them into highways over which it would
be pleasure, instead of torture, to travel.
There are few graveled streets that have
to sustain nearly all the wear and tear of
vehicles, and they are mostly holding their
own in good shape. Nearly all the traffic
between the business and the southeastern
portion of the city passes over Seventh,
Ninth, NJ and n streets as far as possible,
and when vehicles have to leave these
thoroughfares locomotion becomes some
thing awful. If all the streets were, how
ever, as good as those mentioned, the traffic
would be distributed, and the wear
and tear of each greatly lessened. And
then, too, there would be even less mud on
any street than there now is on the few
that are graded and graveled. With cross
streets every few rods that are two feet deep
with mud, the latter is dragged in upon
the graveled ones from all directions, and
in one season several inches of fine mater
ial is deposited thereon. If none were left
ungraded and improved all would be clean
and hard.
This fact, which must be self-evident,
should prompt all citizens who have the
welfare of the city at heart to sustain any
movement or plan looking to the perma-
nent improvement of all the streets. En-
gineer Grunsky, in his statement to the citi-
zens' meeting last Monday evening, showed
that good streets could be had-if the work
were done on broad scale-at cost of only
$500 per block. or $120 for frontage of so
feet, and only $50 for frontage of 40 feet.
And this, too, includes an estimate for
stone cutters, while many are of the opin-
ion that cutters of redwood would answer
for several years, and could then be re-
placed with cobbles or granite.
Good streets, once established, would re-
quire but trihing yearly outlay for re-
pairs, and property-owners would soon
save, in reduced taxes, the expense of grad
ing and improving, while the market value
of their property would at once be greatly
increased. 1t is a common sense business
proposition, for thousands of dollars may
be expended every year on the ungraded
streets and every succeeding winter will
continue to find them in the same quag-
mire condition. Sacramento never had
worse streets, as q whole, than she has to-
day, and it is safe TO say that they have cost
taxpayers enough IN the forty years of her
cityhood to have provided most of the in
tersections with crosswalks of silver blocks.
It is to be hoped that the movement re-
Gently inaugurated may result in some
thing more tangible than resolutions and
''chin-music"