June 1942] Agricultural Experiment Station 31 



Areas which offer good or fairly good agricultural or recreational 

 opportunity should be provided with the best road services the town 

 can afford. The minimum standard for roads in such areas might 

 possibly be a fifteen foot all-weather gravel road, with a twenty-one 

 foot span from shoulder to shoulder."' Advantage, however, should 

 be taken of the fact that the amount of road maintenance required to 

 keep good agricultural areas accessible to markets varies with the 

 type of farming carried on within the area. P'or example, the level 

 of road maintenance within a dairying district must be higher than 

 that of an area producing less perishable crops. Roads in areas un- 

 suitable for agriculture or recreation should be abandoned as rapidly 

 as the readjustments which must necessarily accompany abandon- 

 ment can be humanely made. In many cases, towns will find it more 

 economical to buy isolated locations in unproductive districts than to 

 provide them with road services and educational facilities. 



In establishing priorities, town governments may avail them- 

 selves of the services of local Rural Planning committees. These 

 committees must also be responsible for encouraging their fellow 

 townspeople to take a long-range view of how the town's economic 

 and social life can best be served. They must urge their town govern- 

 ments to employ savings effected through road abandonment for im- 

 proving roads in the better areas, and to resist the temptation to use 

 all of the increases in State aids to reduce their tax burdens. 



In summary, the development of priorities in road improvement 

 and maintenance is not a grandiose scheme of running a good road to 

 every farmer's house; nor is it one which necessarily calls for any 

 additional expenditure on roads. What is suggested is that towns 

 adopt and continue in the future a policy of planning the expenditure 

 of their available road funds so as to develop their most productive 

 rural areas. If this policy of critically evaluating roads as they relate 

 to the wisest utilization of the land is followed by a town over a period 

 of years, unproductive and submarginal areas will be closed up and 

 the rural areas of the town which have greatest potentialities for 

 production of wealth will be given the opportunity to produce to 

 capacity. 



2" This is the standard which certain highway divisions in the State are attempting to obtain through 

 the use of Town Road Aid funds. 



