John Loudon McAdam

“ The advantages of the new method of making roads are so apparent, they have not failed of attracting attention; but I have not been equally fortunate in inducing the gentlemen of the country to observe the means by which economy and improvement have been combined.
It is not only to the simplicity and cheapness of the new system, that the great difference of expense is owing. In every place where the system has been properly acted upon, care has been taken to place the road business on the same respectable footing as other branches of the public service ”

“ Gravel is the only material you have in that neighbourhood?—Gravel is the only material we find, on or near the spot.
Is the traffic upon the Whitechapel road so great as to render it impossible to preserve it in good order with the present materials?—It is impossible to preserve it in good order at all times, with the present materials; it is past the art of man.
Do you consider the traffic upon that road, as greater than upon any other road out of London?—I believe it is a heavier traffic; there are not so many light carriages, as on some other roads. ”

“ Are you not of opinion that the immense weights carried by the broad-wheeled waggons, even by their perpendicular pressure, do injury by crushing the materials?—On a new-made road the crush would do mischief, but on a consolidated old road the mere perpendicular pressure does not do any. But there is a great deal of injury done by the conical form of the broad wheels, which operate like sledging instead of turning fairly. There is a sixteen-inch wheel waggon which comes out of Bristol, that does more injury to our roads than all the travelling of the day besides. ”

“ There cannot, in my opinion, be any necessity to lay the foundation of a road on any ground, even the most soft and peaty, with large stones; daily observation tells me, that this is a great waste of time, materials, and money. I have had, for these five or six years past, a great deal of experience in seeing roads made, one in particular, over a very soft peat bog, by Wedmore and Glastonbury, in this county. ”

“ But I should greatly mislead the Committee if I did not inform them, that skill in the operative part of road-making cannot alone produce a reformation of the multitude of abuses that are practised in almost every part of the country, in the management of roads and road funds. These abuses can only be put down by officers in the situation of gentlemen, who must enjoy the confidence, and have the support of commissioners, and who must exercise a constant and vigilant inspection over the expenditure made by the sub-surveyors. ”

“ I think a waggon wheel of six inches in breadth, if standing fairly on the road with any weight whatever, would do very little material injury to a road well made, and perfectly smooth. The injury done to roads is by these immense weights striking against materials, and in the present mode of shaping the wheels they drive the materials before them, instead of passing over them, because I think if a carriage passes fairly over a smooth surface, that cannot hurt the road, but must rather be an advantage to it, upon the principle of the roller. ”

“ With a view of establishing good roads generally throughout the kingdom, and of keeping them in repair upon the most economical plan, what limitation would you propose as to the actual weight each carriage should be allowed to carry?—I should think it should never exceed four tons, which should be a ton upon each wheel; when it exceeds that weight the best materials which can be procured for road-making must be deranged and ground to pieces. ”

“ From conviction of the very insufficient and expensive nature of the method in use, I was led to consider of the possibility of constructing lines of communication, capable of conveying the heaviest weights over every kind of soil, and at all seasons, upon principles purely scientific: a plan, which even in theory differs as widely from the inartificial methods of road-making hitherto practised, as the principle by which an arch is thrown over a river, differs from the heap of stones which constitutes the ford. ”

“ The measure of substituting pavements, for convenient and useful roads, is a kind of desperate remedy, to which ignorance has had recourse. The badness, or scarcity of materials, cannot be considered a reasonable excuse; because the same quantity of stone required for paving, is fully sufficient to make an excellent road any where: and it must be evident, that road materials of the best quality may be procured at less cost than paving stone. ”

“ Does not the great expense attending the renewal of acts of parliament, contribute very much to restrain a proper improvement of the roads in the kingdom?—The expense of renewing so many acts of parliament, as is occasioned by the great division of trusts in the country, certainly absorbs a very great sum of the road revenue of the kingdom ”

“ For these reasons, I have always been convinced of the propriety of an intelligent accountable officer in each district, but I do not see to whom he can be responsible with so great propriety, or in other words, in whom the chief control can be so well vested, as in the gentlemen who live in the county, who are almost daily witnesses of what is doing, and are chiefly interested in keeping down the expenses, at the same time having their roads in good repair. ”

“ We have weighing machines in the neighbourhood I now am in, and I am persuaded in many instances that they are made instruments of oppression, and in a great many cases the means of committing very great fraud on the commissioners and others; and if some method could be fallen upon by which weighing machines might be dispensed with altogether, and the road reasonably protected, I should think it a very great public advantage. ”

“ I should imagine the operative part of preparing roads cannot be effected without procuring a more skilful set of sub-surveyors; young men, brought up to agriculture and labour must be sought, and regularly instructed. It is a business that cannot be taught from books, but can only be acquired by a laborious practice of several months, and actual work upon roads, under skilful road-makers. ”

“ Are you of opinion that the gravel which is found in the pits in the neighbourhood of London is calculated for making roads capable of bearing the heavy weights which the great traffic round London occasions to be used upon them?—I am of opinion that the materials in the whole valley or plain around London being entirely silicious, or flints, and easily ground, to dust, are very improper. ”

“ The great difference between the cost of a road, and even the worst London pavement, would enable the city to bestow such care on the cleanliness of the carriage ways, as would allow the inhabitants to enjoy all the advantages of smooth road, with even increased comfort to the foot passenger. ”

“ When I remarked the great improvement in many of the highways during the last twenty years, I by no means meant to say that they are not still capable of much greater, or that many of them have not been much neglected. In many districts this is notoriously the case, and when the materials are the best, the roads are frequently the worst. There is no road round London upon which there is more heavy country traffic, than the first stage of the great Essex or Mile End road ”

“ The disadvantages of a flat road again are, that even if it is supposed to continue so, it is bad in principle, by doing away the tendency which a road ought to have, in every direction, to clear itself of water; but as the greatest wear will always be in the middle of the road, a level or flat road will very soon be concave; the middle of the road then becomes the watercourse, and the consequence, if the road is upon level ground, is, that the water and mud lie upon it, and injure the foundation and materials ”

“ In your experience have you found that the common mode of employing paupers by day-work, is inefficient both to the improvement of the roads and to the object of relieving the parishes?—It may have the effect of relieving the parishes, but I should think it a very bad mode of mending the roads; inasmuch as these men, when they have got day-wages, will do very little, and for that reason I employ all our men on piece-work; we have two hundred and eighty labourers in the district of Bristol, and they are almost all on piece-work; it is very seldom we employ men by the day. ”

“ It is to these roads that the heaviest complaints made by the coachmasters, and the surveyor of mail coaches under the post-office, principally apply; and whether an improvement is to be effected by the importation of flint, and other common materials, or by laying granite pavement in the centre or sides of the roads, it is evident that, “the measure to be performed in an economical and efficient manner, must be done upon an extended scale it must become one interest, directed by one select body of men, of weight, ability, and character.” ”

“ Every road is to be made of broken stone without mixture of earth, clay, chalk, or any other matter that will imbibe water, and be affected with frost; nothing is to be laid on the clean stone on pretence of binding; broken stone will combine by its own angles into a smooth solid surface that cannot be affected by vicissitudes of weather, or displaced by the action of wheels, which will pass over it without a jolt, and consequently without injury. ”

“ Thus, while many simple trades require, by law, an apprenticeship of seven years, before the person is thought qualified to practise with his own capital, the road-surveyor is supposed fit, the very hour he is named, for an office which requires at least as much understanding and experience as the average of trades, and in which he has the capital of all the parish to speculate with. ”

“ The best form for a road, in order to avoid those evils, is,—in my opinion, to form it, and to keep it with just a sufficient rise towards the middle, to incline the water towards the sides; and in place of making the whole width the section of one curve, to form it by two straight lines, forming inclined planes, and joined by a curve towards the middle. ”

“ It is uncommon now, to meet with roads repaired with large stones, or of the dangerous convex form, which was the universal custom about five years ago; but these improvements being merely grafted on the old erroneous method, have never been attended with the rapid diminution of expense, and the durable advantages which immediately result from the adoption of the entire system as recommended by me.
Those who continue to use any part of the old method of road-making, are not, perhaps, aware of the principles upon which they are acting. ”

“ The erroneous opinion so long acted upon, and so tenaciously adhered to, that by placing a large quantity of stone under the roads, a remedy will be found for the sinking into wet clay, or other soft soils, or in other words, that a road may be made sufficiently strong, artificially, to carry heavy carriages, though the sub-soil be in a wet state, and by such means to avert the inconveniences of the natural soil receiving water from rain, or other causes, has produced most of the defects of the roads of Great Britain. ”

“ Have you not found that a foundation of bog sinks?—No, not a bit of the road sinks; and we have the same thickness of materials on the one as on the other.
If a road be made smooth and solid, it will be one mass, and the effect of the substrata, whether clay or sand, can never be felt in effect by carriages going over the road; because a road well made, unites itself into a body like a piece of timber or a board. ”

“ Do you consider that it would be advisable to pave the whole of the roads, or that the paving of the centre or sides, as has been recommended by some witnesses, would be sufficient?—I apprehend that the paving a proper width in the centre would be quite sufficient, gravel might be proper enough for the sides, upon the same principle that we, in all new roads which are constructed, make use of metalling, or broken stones on the middle part of the road, for about from sixteen to eighteen or twenty feet in breadth, and leave the sides gravelled and kept dry ”

“ Is the pay of those men proportionably low with their abilities to work?—I have not found that to be the case. I have found that those poor, miserable men, who can do very little, have been getting considerable wages, and in that way a considerable sum has been wasted.
In point of practice, then, the road revenue is made to act as a poor fund?—Precisely so; I think the road revenue has gone to the assistance of the poor in that way. ”