Turnpike road

“ I have seen that the resistance to the rolling motion of a carriage on a well-constructed turnpike road may be fairly estimated, cæteris paribus, at about twelve times the resistance on a railroad. It follows, therefore, that whatever be the power of traction used, it will be capable of drawing a load of proportionally less amount on the turnpike road. The surface of a turnpike road is necessarily more uneven than that of a railroad ”

“ I may not be, perhaps, far from the truth in assuming that the average traction of level turnpike roads, in the summer or frosty season, is about twelve times that of railroads; and consequently that the same power acting on a railroad, will always draw or impel twelve times the load which it can transport on a common road. But I am decidedly of opinion that a steam coach or carriage cannot be used on turnpike roads in the winter season, more particularly after a sharp frost, on a new road ”

“ The want of the same evenness on the surface of a turnpike road, the different states of repair in which different parts of it must necessarily be at any given time, but, above all, the fact that the rolling of the carriages themselves is the means by which the road is for the most part formed, consolidated and rendered smooth, make it necessary that any power of traction used upon it shall be susceptible, as occasion may require, of considerably varied energy. ”

“ The turnpike system continued to develop with continual changes through three or four generations. It survived the competition of the railroads. It was vastly improved by the new local legislation of from forty to twenty years ago. It left us with the road system we now enjoy, which must, under the pressure of quite recent changes, be modified if our communications are to be saved, or, at any rate, to keep pace with the present conditions of travel. ”

“ Where the level of any turnpike or public road has to be altered in making any railway, the gradient of any altered road need not be better than the mean inclination of the existing road within a distance of 250 yards of the point of crossing the railway; but where the existing roads have easy gradients, then the gradients of the altered roads, whether carried over, or under, or on the level with the railway, must not be steeper than 1 in 30 for a turnpike road, 1 in 20 for a public carriage road, 1 in 16 for a private or occupation road. ”

“ I have explained that the effect of incurvations on a road will obstruct the speed, whether it be a railroad or a turnpike road, but that the increased resistance offered by them on turnpike roads, bears a much smaller proportion to the resistance on the level, than is the case in railroads. The increased power, therefore, required by them, is not so great proportionally on turnpike roads as on railways ”

“ Similar arguments were urged not more than a century ago against the formation of new turnpike roads. The bittern, it was said, would be driven from his pool, the fox from his earth, the wild fowl would be frightened away from the marshes, and many a fine haunch of venison would be sent to London markets without the proper ceremonies of turning off and running down the buck. Merrie England could not exist without miry roads. In 1760 there was no turnpike road between the port of Lynn and the great corn and cattle market at Norwich. ”

“ Washington, and the one that stood near the eastern base of Big Savage Mountain. At the last mentioned point, the old iron gate posts are still standing, firmly rooted in their original foundations, and plastered all over with advertisements of Frostburg’s business houses, but the old house and the old gates have gone out of sight forever.
It is curious to note how the word turnpike has been perverted from its literal meaning by popular usage. The common idea is that a turnpike is a road made of stone, and that the use of stone is that alone which makes it a turnpike. ”

“ At present the three or four miles of good solid road in and out of a provincial town are nothing to a young man who starts off after his work on Saturday evenings, and in many cases he has a bicycle with which to run over them more easily still. At that time the roads, even main roads, were in a filthy state; the Act of 1775, by making turnpike roads compulsory, did much to improve them, but previously they were often mere quagmires with deep ruts, similar to the roads running by the side of a field where carting has been going on. ”

“ To supply the deficiency of our Road Bills, one sweeping law ought to enact that all turnpike roads should be provided with a raised causeway for foot passengers, at least five feet wide, with cross posts at every furlong to prevent equestrians from abusing it, and with convenient seats at the end of every mile. ”

“ By a General Turnpike Act passed in 1841, justices were authorised, on proof being given to them of a deficiency in the revenue of a turnpike trust, to order the parish surveyor to pay to the trust a portion of the highway rates, to be laid out in actual repairs on parts of the turnpike road within the parish.
Bondholders petitioned Parliament that any deficiency in their profits owing to railway competition should be made good by the railway companies ”

“ In this respect, the Little River Turnpike was one of the best of Virginia’s rural roads, having been laid out and constructed by professional engineers and maintained by hired labor with even more care and regularity than the public roads. In Beattie’s day, as in Moss’s time, the turnpike was the main road between Alexandria and Fairfax, the county seat, and thence to the Valley. ”

“ Above all things the scattered settlements in the upper valley needed communication with each other. The road by which they reached the outer world ran from Wattles’s Ferry to Catskill,—a road much older in its [48] first state than the turnpike and one which the turnpike finally supplanted. The original road had been opened about fifteen years before the turnpike was established. A wheeled vehicle as early as 1787 is known to have made a journey over its entire length. ”

“ We here quitted the stage, which runs no further than Canandaigua, and hired an open Dutch wagon and driver, and a single horse, to carry us to Niagara.... The turnpike road ends at this place [Canandaigua] . The whole length from Albany is two hundred and six or seven miles: it may properly be called two turnpikes, which join each other at Utica. A project is on foot for still extending the turnpike even to Niagara, a direct course to which would not probably exceed one hundred miles. ”

“ The seats of the two families were about ten miles apart, the way between them lying along the now old, then new, turnpike-road connecting Havenpool and Warborne with the city of Melchester: a road which, though only a branch from what was known as the Great Western Highway, is probably, even at present, as it has been for the last hundred years, one of the finest examples of a macadamized turnpike-track that can be found in England. ”

“ A hungry traveler could obtain a substantial meal at an old wagon stand tavern for a “levy,” and two drinks of whisky for a “fippenny bit.” The morning bill of a wagoner with a six-horse team did not exceed one dollar and seventy-five cents, which included grain and hay for the horses, meals for the driver, and all the drinks he saw proper to take.
The National Road is not in a literal sense a turnpike. A turnpike, in the original meaning of the word, is a road upon which pikes were placed to turn travelers thereon through gates, to prevent them from evading the payment of toll. ”

“ Would that time and space were mine to explain the road, pauper, and school systems of Massachusetts and Connecticut. (They and Rhode Island are the only states of New England which I have visited.) But that would require too much detail. Their felicitous organization may be inferred from their effects.
The common roads are all, or nearly all, ridged up, turnpike fashion, and fully as good as our turnpikes. I do not mean such as a certain one not far from ——, which the traveller knows to be a turnpike only by the tolls and the jolts, but those in the valley, and near Richmond. ”

“ The public vehicle comes in much at the same time as the private vehicle, developed by the new great landlord class for their convenience in their country rounds. As has been the case with the internal combustion engine in our own time, the instrument preceded the change in the road. As wheeled traffic for passengers becomes more common you get increasing complaints on the condition of the roads and increasing motive for improving them, and out of that grows the turnpike system, which, with its later development, has carried us on to the present day. ”

“ XXI.—An Act to authorize the President and Managers of the Rockville and Washington turnpike road company, of the state of Maryland, to extend and make their turnpike road to or from the boundary of the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, through the said district, to the line thereof. ”

“ Do you think it would be necessary to make any alteration in the form of the present line of turnpike road for the facility of working by steam?—I do not think it would be absolutely necessary; it would, however, be of great benefit to the country and every person in it, if the hills on the present lines of road were more reduced and the surface strengthened; no road should have a greater ascent than one in thirty or one in thirty-five ”

“ Arthur Young did not find the turnpike any better between Bury and Sudbury, in Suffolk: "I was forced to move as slow in it," he says, "as in any unmended lane in Wales. For, ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." ”

“ It is reckoned the largest inland town south of New England, and indeed the only large town without some kind of navigation; to remedy this inconvenience as much as possible, a turnpike road (very superiour to any thing of the kind in America, and which will cost three thousand dollars per mile,) is forming from Philadelphia, through Lancaster, to the Susquana. ”

“ With these useful and even splendid works upon the same line of Road, it becomes a matter of Surprise, that the distance between Westgate turnpike, at the crossing of Gower Street North, up to the Regent’s Park, should not only remain without any reformation, but that buildings,—workmen’s huts,—sheds,—smoky chimneys, and all manner of nuisances, should be allowed not only to continue, but to increase daily close to the Road. ”

“ The argument was that the broader the wheels, the greater would be the distribution of weight, and consequently the road would be less injured. It was an argument based, correctly enough, upon natural laws, and the age124 was not educated to the point of seeing that roads should be made to the measure of the traffic they might be called upon to bear, rather than that the build of vehicles should be altered to suit the disabilities of the roads themselves. So, from 1766, a series of Turnpike Acts began, containing clauses by which narrow wheels were penalised and broad ones relieved. ”

“ I have been assured, and believe it to be true, though I cannot pledge myself for the certainty of the fact, that there is annually laid out on repairs upon the road from Hyde Park to Hounslow considerably above £1000 a mile. A turnpike road cannot be made in almost any situation for less, as I am told, than £1000 per mile ”

“ That is, that the toll road, in order to attract a barely sustaining traffic must be designed to standards adequate for the accommodation of a traffic far greater than that which it can actually attract. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, for example, could serve with complete convenience a traffic of 12,000 vehicles a day. Its actual average traffic is between three and four thousand vehicles a day, the bare minimum commonly considered essential to justify the construction of a 4-lane, divided highway. ”

“ The road passes north of his house; and, at a point a quarter of a mile to the westward and about the same distance south of the National turnpike, it intersects a country road which extends northward to the turnpike. Continuing from this point in the same straight line, it crosses the turnpike one-fourth of a mile west of a milestone which bears the inscription “104 to Wheeling To Frostburg 16.” Up the mountain for a distance of less than a mile the scar of the road is clearly seen, as far as the north fork of Spiker Run on the eastern slope. ”

“ But this highly specialised meaning was destroyed when Turnpike Acts and Highway Acts began to be passed. The first Turnpike Act, one relating to the road to the North, referred to the Shoreditch, Stamford Hill, Ware, and Royston route, which joined the Great North Road at Alconbury Hill. It was passed in 1663, and authorised a toll-gate at Stilton, among other places. In the preamble to this Act we find the road spoken of as “the ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York and so into Scotland.” ”

“ The stone roads, which were passable at all seasons, brought a new era in correspondence and business. Lines of stages and wagons, as well known at that time as are the great railways of today, plied the new thoroughfares, provided some of the comforts of travel, and assured the safer and more rapid delivery of goods. This period is sometimes known in American history as "The Era of Good Feeling" and the turnpike contributed in no small degree to make the phrase applicable not 61 only to the domain of politics but to all the relations of social and commercial life. ”