The New York herald., 1921-04-17
The OUTLOOK FOR
NEW ROADS is GOOD
A Great Many Of the Present
Highways Are in Very
Poor Condition.

The discussion anent the costly high
way situation in some States. with the
talk at Washington of a Senatorial in
vestgation into the application OF Fed
eral aid in road construction. has stirred
highway officials. engineers. road builders
and good road advocates to seek ways
and means whereby highway depart
ments may the more accurately arrive at
justiflable first cost OF highway con-
struction and methods Of financing road
work that will tighten the burden to the
taxpayers.
J. e. Pennybacker, secretary of the
Asphalt Association, New York city, for
ner chief road economist for the United
States Bureau OF Public Roads and the
American Automobile Association, has
come forward with a plan. which he be-
leves. no matter in what State 1t is ap-
piled. will tend to prevent burdeneome
conditions such as those in Arkansas.
Mr.. Pennybacker advocates a more care
full survey to determine justifiable first
cost and the application of principles he
has evolved as the result of years of
study In road economics, to determine
the length of time necessary to pay for
an Improvement and the rate at which
the payments should be made. In regard
to his remedy Mr.. Pennybacker says:
Determination of justif1able outlay
for proposed highway Improvement
from anticipated service should call for
AZ least as careful a survey and estimate
as the engineer now provides for the
engineering features preliminary to the
construction of the highway. Millions Of
miles OF earth roads and thousands of
miles of lightly surfaced and poorly de-
signed gravel and macadam roads i'm
pose upon the highway engineers of the
nation the task of so parcelling out high
way revenue that 1t will be applied to the
highways In proportion as they show
traffic Justification for Improvement.
TO incorporate this requirement into
highway engineering practice Ia to make
the traffic unit as widely used as the
customary units of physical measure
ment. This measurement of justiftable
outlay by the yardstick Of traffic does
not Disregard the profound beneficial in
nuence of the highway upon social life
and educational development in rural
districts. but inasnuch as they 20 hand
In hand with traffic development the
latter may IN general bo regarded as an
index of both tho direct and indirect
value Of the Improvement
Motor vehicle traffic predominates to
such an extent as to make logical the
adoption of a system Of measuring costs
and justifiable outlay primarily in units
derived from this class of traffic. Thus
while the unit commonly used for horse
drawn traffic Is the ten mile and applies
to load rather than to vehicle 1t is
necessary to adopt a unit which will
take into account the eight and a quar-
ter million passenger automobiles now
registered and the millions to come and
which will allow credit to the highway
for the saving in their operating costs
To substitute vehicle mile would not
fully meet this need, as the million
trucks in use and those yet to come
must be rated as deriving greater bene-
fit individually than the passenger car
simple plan sufficiently comprehensive
to meet most needs is to retain the ton
mile as the unit Of measurement but
to regard each passenger car and each
one and two horse vehicle as the equiva-
lent of the one ton, while the motor truck
and the heavy team outfits would be
regarded an the equivalent Of the We
hicle weight plus the load in tons. This