RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 89 



carry heavy traffic and to the short residential street required for 

 purely domestic needs of a few houses. In many districts acres of 

 macadam, asphalt and concrete are laid in a few streets and might 

 with advantage be used over twice the length of street now paved. 

 One consequence of this irrational and expensive method is that 

 the cost of local improvements to the local councils in many locali- 

 ties is so great that money is not available for necessary purposes 

 of public sanitation. Another is that the tax burden on the property 

 owners is so heavy that they are proportionably limited in the capital 

 available for making their houses sanitary and durable in construc- 

 tion, and they are compelled to crowd their land with buildings in 

 order to put it to economic use. 



But even at this late day, with all the lessons we have had of 

 waste of land and unnecessary expenditure of capital in providing 

 for too wide roads for purely local traffic — in providing many miles 

 of road space where it is not needed at all, and in thus lessening the 

 ability of provincial and local authorities to obtain the space and pro- 

 vide the means to construct main arterial highways where these are 

 required — there are those who regard any suggestion to make streets 

 narrower than 60 or 66 feet as reactionary. Yet there are few who 

 will deny that it is impracticable, in any community where the dens- 

 ity of building is comparatively open, as in Canada, to provide land 

 and make satisfactory roads or streets to a greater average width 

 than 66 feet. What happens is that the land is provided for roads 

 or streets, as the law requires, but that few of the roads or streets 

 are ever properly constructed, the reason being that there is too much 

 road surface for the population, even when the land is closely set- 

 tled. Excessively wide streets, instead of securing more air space, 

 cause congestion, e.g., in the erection of apartment houses in towns 

 because without such congestion the frontages coidd not afford to meet 

 the cost of local improvements. This has been proved in Germany, 

 Sweden, and other countries where the tenement system prevails, 

 and it is being proved in Canada where the tendency towards the 

 tenement building is being created by the wide street. In the rural 

 districts, although land is plentiful and cheap, it stands to reason 

 that all roads should not be of the same width, and that there should 

 be variation to suit the requirements of traffic. 



The By-Law Minimum of Width 



What happens in practice is that our by-laws fix a width, not 

 according to scientific theory, nor yet on any practical basis, but 

 simply because of the convenience of making a hard and fast rule 



