42 
Rural Roads. 
should be abolished. On the kind of road surface which the 
general public are entitled to demand, side slips should be 
rarely experienced. It is moreover most desirable that the 
travelling way should be widened at cross roads, and the roads 
joined by easy curves. All main roads should have footpaths 
or wide grass margins. 
It was lately proposed to construct special motor roads to 
join London, Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton, and Dover, 
the main line being from London to Dover, of a length of 
forty-three miles, with branches fifty-seven miles and sixty-six 
miles long. A company bearing the title, “Motor Roads, Ltd.,” 
was registered with respect to this project on September 30, 
1905, with a capital of 150,000?. Nothing definite had then 
been decided upon as to the road surface or charges for the use 
of the road. 
The Royal Commission on Motor Cars, in their valuable 
Report, issued in 1906, deal at considerable length with this 
question, but give no very definite recommendation as to the 
course of action which should be adopted or the detailed 
.methods which should be employed for its solution. As their 
conclusions closely confirm the opinions on the subject 
originally formulated by the writer in 1905, he ventures 
to quote from the Report as follows : — 
“ There is no doubt at all about the dust nuisance ; during the summer 
months it exists more or less on all frequented roads, but more particularly on 
the great main roads and within a radius of thirty or forty miles of London, 
and it causes material damage, discomfort, and annoyance to users of, and 
dwellers by, the highways. ... It was generally admitted, and we have 
no doubt of the fact, that pneumatic tyres of motor cars from their suction and 
the propelling action of the driving wheels, are especially liable to lift up dust 
lying on the road and to draw out the binding of the road, particularly if the 
binding is originally of a loose and inferior description. . . . There seemed 
to be a general belief, in which we concur, that a car standing high from the 
ground, with a clear smooth run for the draught beneath it, is the build 
calculated to produce least dust. . . . Speaking generally, we came to the 
conclusion that at a speed below ten miles an hour the dust raised is compara- 
tively slight, that it increases very greatly however at from, say, twelve to 
twenty miles an hour, and continues to increase but in a smaller proportion at 
higher speeds. . . . There is no doubt that a well-constructed road made of 
hard stone, carefully laid on a good foundation, with proper filling or binding 
material, and well rolled, will produce far less dust than a poorly constructed 
road, made with some soft or unsuitable stone of the district and filled in with 
road scrapings or other unsatisfactory binding, as is often the case. . . . 
“Generally speaking, the evidence suggests that the best type of macadam 
will probably be found the most effective and economical road for all kinds of 
traffic, including both heavy and light motor cars. In localities where 
(a) exceptionally heavy vehicles and loads are common, e.g., in the neighbour- 
hoods of large manufacturing towns, or where (V) precautions against dust are 
exceptionally necessary, specific treatment was suggested. When provision 
is to be made for exceptionally heavy traffic some harder and more durable 
and therefore more costly pattern of road would have to be employed. In this 
connection the system of armouring a metalled road surface with stone blocks, 
