1908.] on the Modern Motor Car and its Effects. 159 



Year. 



1896-97 

 1898-99 

 1900-01 

 1902-03 

 1904-05 

 1905-06 



Gross Expenditure Average Amount 



on Maintenance, ixTiiooo--^ of such 



Repair, and luueage. , Expenditure 



Improvement. I per Mile. 



In addition, Rural District Councils and Urban authorities repair 

 another 10,088 miles of main road on which the cost has also risen. 



Near towns, villages, and scattered cottages, the demand for the 

 use of dustless material is becoming so insistent that surveyors and 

 highway committees are being forced to study, seemingly for the first 

 time since the railway era, 70 years ago, the problem of how to make 

 good roads of durable and withal dustless material. It is only a few 

 weeks ago, when talking to a district surveyor — whose system of road 

 making is apparently, more dustless and durable than any other system 

 as yet tried — that he expressed his gratitude to motorists for having 

 exposed the weakness of the antiquated system of road making which 

 had existed for so many years, and regretted that road surveyors in 

 general had to admit that up to now the problem of making a hard 

 and dustless road had not been solved. There can be no doubt that 

 roads are gradually reassuming the importance which they possessed 

 in the pre-railway days. Telford and Macadam were enabled by State 

 help and private enterprise to construct new roads upon their then 

 new systems. The Holyhead road and the Great North road are the 

 last two important arteries for traffic which were constructed in this 

 country. Though made some seventy years ago, they serve — and 

 will serve for centuries to come — as lasting monuments to those 

 two great civil engineers. I can conceive no finer memorial of a 

 man than the building of a fine road useful to mankind for all 

 time. It is truly o^re perennius. It is a national disgrace, however, 

 that since then no new highway has been constructed, although this 

 country's population and wealth have increased enormously, and 

 though the traffic on the roads is a hundredfold greater than at 

 the time of Telford and Macadam. The motor car, in sober fact, 

 has reminded the nation of the importance of its roadways, which it 

 had forgotten since the use of the railway had become so general and 

 unchallenged. Now, however, road questions will gain more and 

 more every year in importance, new and wide exits from large cities, 

 such as London, must be made, and motor roadways between centres 

 of population will probably in a few years be constructed to relieve 

 the congestion of the present highways, which will then be left for the 



