Arizona republican., 1916-12-24
GUESSING AT
 ROAD COSTS

So much has been said about the im- possibility of estimating the cost of road without a proper preliminary en- glneering examination of the route that some conservative taxpayers are in clined to think that hidden in all this linguistic smoke is a surreptitious de- sire to make jobs for engineers So an officially reported instance of wild guess at road costs by thoroughly experienced department may be cited profitably to prove that the taxpayer is the sole beneficiary of good highway engineering
 Cape Cod is a somewhat rolling tract of deep sand covered with low scrup oak and pine. It has some marshes and small ponds. It has been surveyed by the toposraphers of the [. s. geo. logical survey and thoroughly> mapped by them. For ten years the Massa- chusettS highway commission has been building roads there. and it's engineers are familiar with the general condi- tionS influencing the cost of roadbuild- ing. A year or so ago the commission was officially requested to make i'm mediately an estimate of the cost of building a 21a mile road through an unsettled part of this scrub-oak dis trict. There was no time to make sur veys and an estimate of S220 000 was accordingly prepared on the basis of the existing information and eXperi- ence in similar work there. The data at hand were more comprehensive, it should be observed, than those which are often used in laying out far more comprehensive schemes for the ap- proval of taxpayers.
 Later proper survey of the road was made and it was found that the route laid down from the information originally available would cost SS6, 900 to build. but another route which did not seem desirable originally could be adopted and the cost reduced to S27, 900 The original estimate was. therefore, only tWo-thirds of the cost of the pro- posed road. and only four-fifths of the cost by the better route located later. But this IS by no means all of the story The Massachusetts legislature made guess of it's own at the cost of this road before it asked any help from the commission, and actually appropri- ated $14,000 to build the road without having any knowledge of what the Work would cost.
 What would have been the result had construction been started as soon as the legislative appropriation was avail able? It would have been impossible to complete the road and travellers over the completed section would have been led to an almost impossible trail through the loose sand of a scrub oak barren. Everybody connected with the undertaking, except the legislature really at fault. would have been blamed for their poor management of t the work and sensible roadbuilding would have become a subject of local derision.
 Such nasty, inaccurate guesses at road costs caused great deal of trou- ble in Virginia a few years ago. Coun- ty officials designated a large mileage of roads for improvement guessed at the cost, and then persuaded the tax payers to vote bonds for the con struction. When all this was done, when the people had committed them selves t0 considerable debts on prom ise of definite systems of good roads. engineers were at last called into the business. They reported that the roads could not be built for the money provided, particularly where consider able grading was necessary and com paratively expensive types of construc
 tion were proposed. This resulted in so much dissatisfaction and aroused such opposition to road improvements, that the Virginia legislature had to pass laws to regulate such affairs, which require a proper estimate of the cost of roads to be made before bonds are issued to pay for them. As a mat ter of fact, there should be q law in i every state requiring an examination and estimate by q competent person of any proposed road improvements cost , ing more than $500 per mile before such work is undertaken. There is an enOr- { nous waste of money on roads every year, due to undertaking more than there are funds to pay for and. when this is discovered, spending the re- maining money is silly scratching of i the ground to make q mere temporary l change in conditions, which the first | hard rain will ruin