Norwich bulletin., 1913-12-11
DESCRIBES STATES PLAN
 FOR TRUNK HIGHWAYS.
Commissioner Bennett Also Takes a Rap at Politics in Road Building.

The work which the state highway
 commission is attempting to accom- 1 plish in the construction and repair of i highways was the theme of an inter
 estine address by Commissioner
 Charles J. Bennett before the Auto
 mobile club of Hartford at it's smoker ] recently The commissioner told of the varying value of the graded road, the | gravel road, the bituminous road and l the road which is the best of all, the | bituminous and gravel road. and em- i phasized the fact that the lasting | qualities of a road depend very largely upon the drainage of the roadbed. He referred to stretches of road in the i towns of Branford and Salisbury Wher,, i defective drainage had cost the de .. 1 partment a great deal of money, and 1 explained that good drainage in roa 1 l once properly provided for meant thaL ] a good road could be maintained i thenceforward at comparatively 1 small cost.
 The commissioner said, in regard so 1 repairing the roads, that he was ic favor of the patroing of the highways 1 if force of men could be placed in charge of the work who could be de : pended upon. He did not think that an extensive system of patroling was advisable until the trunk line roads in the state were in good condition throughout
 The speaker paid his respects to the 1 'spoils system" of Connecticut He said that while John Smith might do
 excellent work at the polls. it did not
 mean that he was a good road builder and that in his department at the present time there was nothing quite so annoying as the attempts of some
 politicians to place their politicaI 1 friends in the department. He said that they were building a state high way system and not a state politiCal machine. and that he was attempting
 to demonstrate this fact once and for all.
 A specially interesting part of th3
 talk was a description of the seven trunk line highways which the com mission is trying to complete through the state in the next two years. There are no less than 28 trunk highways in the state, and of these the present commission proposes to complete Sev- en. The first of the seven referred t0
 is the one which runs from New Haven
 to Westerly, R. l. It is at present in
 very bad condition. In fact, in some
 places there is scarcely any road at
 all. Since it leads to some of the i'm portant Massachusetts and Rhode Isl and summer resorts and importan:
 manufacturing centers, Commissioner
 Bennett deems this to be one of the
 most important of the roads. that ar
 to be completed.
 The road from New Haven to
 Springfield is in better condition. An
 other important line is that whiC-ls
 leads from Stratford to Winsted
 through Derby, shelton and Waterbury to Torrington, following one of the most picturesque routes of the state and leading into the popular sunsne, residential sections of Litchfield coun- ty.
 Still another line will extend from New London to Thompson, connecting with the Massachusetts system at that point. Bids have been opened for very bad half mile section of this road.
 Connecticut travellers will be able to go into New York state more easily when the trunk line road from Hart ford to Waterbury and through Dan bury to Mill Plain is completed This route is in very bad condition at the present time, but all the cities and towns along the line have been inter- ested in the work of the commissioners