The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1908-12-12
WHY MACADAM ROADS GO TO RUIN SO SOON


The magnificent macadamizedr roads
of Europe are the admiration of all
Americans who have had an opportu-
nifty to make use of them. Scientific
ally constructed and most diligently
repaired and maintained. they provide
today, as they have provided in many
cases for centuries, smooth, hard
and well-drained surface, which never
varies in its excellence from season to
season, or from year to year
Here in the United States the art
of macadamized road building, at least
on scale of any magnitude, is of COM
parative1y recent date. Such roads as
we have constructed have been built,
as rule, under experienced engineers
and according to those principles
which have been so thoroughly tested
in Europe. Generally our new roads,
on their completion, are of excellent
quality. The work is So we'll done
that there is no reason why, with
proper maintenance, they should not
show the same wearing qualities as
similar roads abroad.
As matter of fact, in the majority
of cases, Our roads, after single sea-
sons wear, begin to show serious
signs of going to pieces, and frequent
1y, after two or three seasons wear,
have lapsed into a condition that is
little better than that of common
country dirt road. If the top dress
ing has not disappeared entirely, it
will be found in the shape of deep
layer of dust and fine stone at each
side Of the roadway; the stripped
surface will be worn more or less
deeply into ruts, or hammered into
hollows, and not infrequently the un-
DERIVING courses of large broken stone
and rock will be clearly discernible.
Why do American macadam roads
go to pieces so swiftly, while those in
Europe maintain their fine surface iu
definitely? The answer is to be found
in the fact that in Europe they have
a careful system of road maintenance,
and in the United States we have
none, or practically none. European
road builders and supervisors, or
whatever they may be called, clearly
understand that there is no engineer
ing work that depends more absolute
ly for its integrity and permanence
upon careful attention and unkeep
than does macadamized highway.
They understand, moreover, that
there is no work of the kind in which
the old acege. a stitch in time saves
nine," is more true than in this, and
consequently, their system of road
maintenance involves constant and
careful inspection, and the immediate
repair of any spot in the road, how
ever small, that shows incipient signs
of breaking down. Hence the work
of keeping up the European roads is
being done all the time, in many
places and by large army of indi-
vidual laborers. The solitary road
repairer, with his wheelbarrow, pick
and shovel, and little pile of broken
stone and top-dressing, is familiar
sight. 1t is his duty to inspect daily
his own section. On detecting a low
spot where water might collect (the
genesis of the American 'chuckhole" }
he makes immediate repairs.
Here, in the United States, we know
little or nothing of such road mainte-
nance as this. No sooner is a stretch
of new road accepted and paid for
than it is left to the tender mercies of
the traffic and the weather. Incipi.
ent ruts and hollows, instead of re-
ceiving the immediate care of the road
member, are allowed to remain full of
the standing water of the last rain
storm. and are quickly deepened and
widened by the wear of the passing
traffic. When the work of destruc.
ton has proceeded unhindered to a
certain stage of ruin, the road is given
wholesale repair (sic) by dumping
upon it few hundred tons of top
dressing, which is left to be crushed
down into the irregular and ragged
surface beneath by such haphazard
rolling as may be given by passing
traffic.
In the present campaign of good
roads, education, more attention
should be paid to the vital function of
road maintenance. Our present prac-
tice of building first class road and
then letting it go to ruin as fast as
wind, weather and traffic can wreck
it, is the height of folly and extrava-
gance.-.Sdenti1fc Amer1can.