THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



139 



CONCRETE FACTS ABOUT CONCRETE ROADS 



How Any Community Can Get Out of the mud, and stay Out, and at the Same Time Make Borrowing Profitable 



What Is a Concrete Road? 



Readers of the Irrigation Age who are inter- 

 ested in building roads for permanence, the only 

 way in which our highway funds may be invested 

 rather than wasted, will appreciate the essential 

 facts of concrete road building. Dry facts are 

 usually hard to take, but a dose of dry facts is some- 

 times necessary for the body politic, and we are here 

 prescribing that kind of a dose. Taken slowly and 

 thoughtfully, you will be in a position to better 

 understand how a road may be built so that it will 

 more than pay back its cost, long before it wears 

 out. 



Clean, hard, well graded sand and pebbles or 

 crushed stone, mixed with cement and water to 

 form a mass of quaky or jelly-like consistency, 

 eventually hardens into stone. When such a mix- 

 ture is laid so that slabs 16 feet wide by from 30 to 

 50 feet long are formed, you have a pave with a 

 durable, non-skid surface that makes possible higher 

 traffic speed with larger loads drawn by fewer horses 

 or less tractive power a road open to traffic 365 

 days in the year briefly, a concrete road. 

 How Is a Concrete Road Built? 



Successful concrete road construction requires, 

 first, proper preparation of a foundation or subgrade. 

 This means compacting the soil where the concrete 

 is to be laid and providing drainage so that water 

 will not remain under the concrete slabs. Upon the 

 properly prepared foundation, concrete is placed in 

 one or two layers, or courses. This means that some 

 concrete roads are built after what is known as the 

 one-course construction. The first consists of a 

 relatively rich concrete mixture throughout ; the 

 second of a somewhat leaner mixture for a base, 

 with a richer top or wearing course applied before 

 the concrete in the base has commenced to harden. 

 Usually where the slabs forming a concrete road are 

 greater than 16 feet wide, or where the road must 

 cross low, frequently wet and hence poorly drained 

 spots, reinforcing in the form of mesh fabric is em- 

 bedded in the concrete while placing. This assists 

 to prevent the slabs from cracking, either as the 

 result of settlement of the foundation or from the 

 heaving due to frost action. Where suitable mate- 

 rials are obtainable, the one-course type of road is 

 preferable. 



High wearing quality of the concrete road re- 

 sults from the using properly graded, clean, hard 

 sand and crushed rock or pebbles. These must be 

 combined with cement and water in proper propor- 

 tions. Portland cement is a firm binder. It holds 

 the sand or broken stone so tightly together that 

 modern traffic produces but little wear on the sur- 

 face and cannot dislodge the particles. 



What Does a Concrete Road Cost? 



Concrete roads cost in the neighborhood of 

 $15,000 per mile to build. When built, the cost of 

 keeping them in repair, owing to the permanence of 

 concrete, is an .average of only $50 per mile. The 

 enormous annual saving in the maintenance of a 



concrete road compared with other types, is shown 

 by statistics gathered from Massachusetts, Con- 

 necticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York 

 for eight years. These combined statistics show a 

 total average cost per mile of $608 for maintenance 

 of roads built with material other than concrete, 

 while a concrete road costs only an average of $50 

 per mile per year. 



Reduced to an acreage basis and distributed 

 over a period of 20 years under a $1,500,000 bond 

 issue, the average cost of a concrete road to a farmer 

 living on land valued at $30.63 per acre is 8}4 cents 

 per acre per year. This estimate is based upon pro- 

 posed concrete road construction in Vermilion 

 county, Illinois, and Vermilion county has just ac- 

 cepted bids for 141 miles of concrete highway. Dis- 

 tributed over a period of years and equalized among 

 the farmers and taxpayers who are thus enabled to 

 reach their market town 365 days in the year and 

 more quickly than ever before : with larger loads 

 drawn by fewer horses, the cost of a concrete road 

 is negligible. So a concrete road is relatively cheap 

 because a profitable investment. 



Financing the Concrete Road 



No extensive road improvement in any com- 

 munity can be carried on without more money than 

 can usually be raised by direct taxation extending 

 through a short term. It is unjust to expect the 

 taxpayers of today to assume the total cost of an 

 improvement which is to last into the next genera- 

 tion, so bonds are usually issued to finance the 

 building of roads that will permanently cut down 

 maintenance expense and reduce hauling costs. 

 These bonds are sold and thus converted into 

 money. Interest on' the bonds is paid, and the bonds 

 retired by funds obtained from current road taxes. 

 When the bonds have been paid the community still 

 has its concrete roads in excellent condition. 



No community can afford to spend its money 

 with less caution than a private individual would 

 display. The community should do likewise. When 

 you are asked to vote for a bond issue to build con- 

 crete roads you are not raising public money to 

 spend it, but to invest it. As concrete road mileage 

 in a community is increased, the burden of road 

 maintenance decreases and the saving thus resulting 

 will not only pay interest on the bonds but provide 

 funds to retire them as they fall due. In this way 

 borrowing is made profitable. 



How a Concrete Road Benefits the Motorist 



Touring possibilities at all seasons of the year 

 and every day in the year go hand in hand with the 

 concrete road. "Safety First" is realized as the 

 result of the non-skid surface. Concrete boulevards 

 through the open country make riding pleasurable 

 by doing away with the jar, dust in dry weather 

 and mud in wet weather. A smooth surface makes 

 steering easy, reduces tire cost, lessens fuel con- 

 sumption. These are some of the ways in which a 

 concrete road benefits the motorist. 



Reduced to simple terms, a concrete road helps 



