Hilaire Belloc

“ It is an absurd anomaly as things now stand that the man who travels in a little Ford car from one town to another with, say, two members of his family—and travels therefore much more cheaply than he could upon the railway—should pay the rent of a house for the privilege of having his car, while the heavy vehicle of a tradesman who is distributing advertising matter—sheer economic loss to the community—should tear up the road for nothing. ”

“ We are not, in this country and in modern times, well acquainted with the obstacle of vegetation to a road and with the modification of trajectory which it imposes. We have no large forests left: we have, in common with all Northern Europe, no exuberance of growth. The dense population and very high road mileage of modern England have put this factor in the development of communication out of sight, and it is so unrecognized that the mention of it here may seem superfluous. ”

“ Just as you had the pre-Roman barbaric period, then the Roman period, then the Dark Ages in the general history of the State, so you had the British trackway, the Roman Road, and the continued use during the continued decline of the latter as material civilization fell away after the fifth century. The spring of the Middle Ages gave you the renaissance of the Road. The Black Death, which is the watershed of the Middle Ages, breaks the history of the Road just as it breaks the history of the language. ”

“ Again, a road of diverse use must strike a compromise in its formula between the various needs subserved. If the great bulk of its use is to provide for rapid military advance by marches, you must sacrifice to shortness some of the easier gradients which would be demanded for traffic mainly civilian, yet if of three main users even the least important is incapable of more than a given gradient, your formula can never exceed that gradient, and so forth. ”

“ Here the whole story of our roads from the middle and the end of the nineteenth century and on to the beginning of this century is the story of improving the surface while keeping to the old winding and narrowness. Here and there we have had extensions of space which create really new roads in the neighbourhood of towns, especially as exits from towns, but nowhere as yet have we a complete scheme for the remodelling of a road in the fashion whereby, a century ago, the great Holyhead Road was remodelled. ”

“ It has been said that London was made by its bridge. Whether there was a settlement (there probably was) upon the gravelly hill which approached the river from the north, before any bridge was thrown across the tidal Thames, we do not know; but it is certain that the throwing of this bridge gave London its opportunity for development, and what is true of London is true of Paris, of Rouen, of Maestricht, of Cologne, and of twenty other great urban centres in our civilization. ”

“ It is clear that our new vehicle, the internal combustion engine, will compel us to new roads, just as the vehicular traffic for passengers at the beginning of the seventeenth century compelled the creation of the turnpike. ”

“ But, whatever the cause, woodland perpetually deflects a Roman road after the breakdown of the old civilization. It deflects it almost as often as does the marsh of a river valley.
(b) The obstacle to the making of a road due to intermittent vegetation is one which plays no part in our system, and is unknown to our climatic conditions. Nor is it of any great effect save in a few special highly characterized regions of the world. The track, once established, can commonly keep down even the riot of spring vegetation in open land. ”

“ In the Dark Ages, when there was little necessity for making a direct line between Dorking and London—no continual marching of great Roman forces, no conveying of orders from a centralized government—men took the easier way. ”

“ You have got in modern times that further curious reaction due to growing excellence of communications—that is, due to the growth of the Road—the pulse of the great modern city. Crowds of human beings pour out of Victoria or Liverpool Street into London and pour back from London in the evening. The station of St. Lazare in Paris is, in Europe, the most striking visual evidence of this strange modern development, great floods of human beings cascading into the city at the opening day and ebbing back at its close. ”

“ It can only be compared to what the future may have to show if we find ourselves able to reform our roads as they should be reformed for the new conditions of modern travel, and even this change would not be anything like as great as the change made by the throwing of those great highways to stand for ever across a country which had hitherto been half barbarous. ”

“ But it must be remembered that the bridging of a river, even in primitive times, was the next easiest thing to a ferry, and in some circumstances easier even than a ferry. A bridge need not be built of piles. It may be built of boats, and in principle, even over a broad stream, once you could build a boat bridge at all you could build it of almost indefinite length. What would militate against the effort to make a pile bridge were depth and rapidity of stream, but even these, unless the rapidity were very great indeed, did not prevent the throwing of a bridge of boats. ”