262 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ROADS AND ROAD LAWS 



By P. S. FENSTERMACHER, Chairman. 



The question of good roads, from an economic standpoint, is one 

 of tlie greatest questions before the American people to-day. The 

 Nation's commerce begins with the township road. Any system of 

 roads and road laws that loses sight of this unit as the beginning 

 of all road improvement and sees only a Lincoln or scenic ocean to 

 ocean highway, or one to connect two distant sections of the State, 

 will be more sentimental and ornamental than practical. We believe 

 that a system of highways connecting the rural districts with the 

 nearby market towns and railroad stations, will be a great uplift 

 to agriculture and also to the consumers of all farm products. 



The New York State Highway Commission is working out a plan 

 for a system of twelve thousand miles of highways, rearranging its 

 county systems so that there will not be any section of New York 

 State outside of the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, that will 

 be further away than five miles from any improved state or county 

 highway; and eventually intends to build connecting links in these 

 five mile breaks, so that every man in New York State will have a 

 road twelve months in the year. Former Governor Glynn of New 

 York, in one of his messages to the New York Legislature, has said 

 that macadam roads were costing New York on an average of |12,000 

 per mile to build, and |1,000 per mile per year to maintain, and at 

 the expiration of ten years, it was necessary to resurface them at 

 a further expenditure of |6,000 per mile. Governor Glynn did not 

 mean that these excessive construction and maintenance costs were 

 due altogether to political corruption or contract jobbery, but that 

 macadam roads will no longer withstand present day traffic. I have 

 cited New York State merely as a neighboring example, showing 

 that with all their millions of bonds issued, the road problem with 

 them is not vet solved. 



Here in ours, the Keystone State, a proposition just as gigantic 

 confronts us. Our percentage of improved roads is only four per 

 cent, or three thousand four hundred and seventy two miles, out of 

 a total of eighty-seven thousand, three hundred and eighty-six. What 

 are we to do? Shall we construct roads that are not going to stand 

 present traffic conditions, or shall we build permanent highways 

 that, although somewhat higher in initial cost, more than balances 

 in the ma>tter of maintenance. We are all aware that it will be 

 many years before even all the main highways are permanently con- 

 structed, and that, for a generation at least, most of the highways 

 and byways of the State will remain what are termed dirt roads. 

 It has been amply demonstrated that these dirt highways can be 

 made excellent roads eight months in the year and passable the 

 other four months, by following just a few simple rules in road main- 

 tenance. 



