30 University of New Hampshire [Bulletin 339 



crease of the wealth of the State. Road accessibility, as has been 

 ])ointed out, plays an important role in making these resources avail- 

 able. Rural people will wish, therefore, to measure the relative value 

 of roads, not only by through traffic needs, but by their effect upon 

 the use of these resources. How can the value of roads be measured 

 in these terms? What shall the measure be? How can they be used? 



The measure used for determining a road's usefulness will be, of 

 course, an evaluation of the potentialities of the area or areas served 

 by the road. Does the area served by the road represent good, fairly 

 good, or poor agricultural opportunity from the point of view of 

 structure and productivity of the soil, length of growing season, 

 drainage, topography, composition of the population, and so on? Is 

 it an area unsuited to farming? If unsuited to agriculture does it have 

 excellent, good, or fairly good recreational resources? If it is an area 

 lacking both agricultural and recreational wealth, should it be re- 

 turned to forest? After the classification of an area has been made, its 

 roads would then be graded by color on maps according to the present 

 and potential agricultural and recreational resources of the districts 

 they serve. 



Thvis, roads would be evaluated not only by the land use areas 

 they are serving at the present time ; but by a consideration of the 

 potential resources of an area, a road's relative usefulness would be 

 projected into the future. In short, roads would not be considered 

 as rewards which are given to areas for economic and social develop- 

 ment, but as institutions which, themselves, influence this develop- 

 ment. 



In evaluating rural roads, the needs of through traffic cannot be 

 overlooked. Land use data can only be used to supplement the traffic 

 data of the highway department. Therefore, when roads are colored 

 on town maps according to the potential usefulness of the land, the 

 roads most important to through traffic should also be charted. Know- 

 ing both present traffic and future land use needs, secondary routes 

 can be projected which will best serve both of these needs. 



TOWN DEVELOPMENT OF PRIORITIES IN LOCAL 

 ROAD IMPROVEMENT AND MAINTENANCE 



State aids to local governments must be recognized as being here 

 to stay. Only by an adequate, but not overgenerous, distribution of 

 State aids can town government be kept alive and vigorous. Never- 

 theless, a more equitable distribution of State aids to towns is not a 

 full or real solution of rural road problems. Although State aids 

 bring financial relief to hard-pressed towns, they do not directly fur- 

 ther the development of town road patterns which encourage satisfac- 

 tory use of the land. With the financial resources of the State limited, 

 towns cannot expect subsidies which permit a "bigger and better" 

 road to each citizen's door. Therefore, if residents of many towns 

 wish to maintain or enlarge the economic bases of their community, 

 they must, in their ingenuity and self-reliance, develop priorities in 

 town road improvement and maintenance. 



