Home » Posts filed under Highway History
Showing posts with label Highway History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Highway History. Show all posts

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION part 2

Posted by aditya | 10:58 AM | , , | 8 comments »


As indicated above, the decades from 1920 to the late 1970s have been called the "automobile age"; and the transition to primary dependence on other currently known systems of transportation or to new vehicles or means of propulsion will be evolutionary. But will motor vehicle use, as well as other demands for transportation in present or modified form, continue to increase as in the past? One viewpoint, that of the prestigious National Transportation Policy Commission, is that it will. A few of its projections for low-, medium-, and high- growth scenarios to the year 2000 . But these do not fully recognize the possible scarcity and already soaring costs of motor fuel. Furthermore, others claim that housing, health care, amenities, and control of the environment will consume a greater share of our resources, including energy, forcing a curtailment in nonessential travel. And it may be that some "essential" trips will become unnecessary as improved means of communication decrease 

the need to travel to the work place. Only one things seems clear; it is that the need for transportation and the highways and other facilities to serve them will be with us in the near future, but less certain as time passes.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION part 1

Posted by aditya | 10:56 AM | , , | 7 comments »


Technological advance has been great during the age of modern highways and continues today. Knowledge has been extended in the fields of soils and other highway materials and the designs using them so that they are now more economical and reliable. Developments in machinery and management techniques have revolutionized construction and maintenance methods. The highway engineer has become increasingly conscious that a highway can be attractive and safe as well as useful and has learned much about roadside improvement, erosion control, and noise abatement. Entirely new approaches have been developed in the fields of highway and urban transportation planning, geometric and structural design, and traffic control. In all of these areas the computer has be¬come an essential tool. Many challenges lie ahead for those interested in re¬search, design, and administration as present practices are refined and new approaches are developed.

Possibly the most difficult problem now facing highway and transportation planners, engineers, and administrators is to define the role of the automobile, highway-based public transit, and other ways of moving people and goods in urban areas. Currently, critics are blaming the automobile for such problems as urban area expansion and wasteful land use, congestion and slum conditions in the central areas, and air and noise pollution. These problems are aggravated by a crisis in petroleum-based energy supply. It follows that those who will plan, construct, maintain, and manage our transportation facilities face a changed world; the problems in the 1980s are not those of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s where the target was to build a system of freeways and other major arteries to accommodate expanding demands for better mobility by automobile. Rather, efforts will be directed toward making minor additions and adjustments to that system, rehabilitating it so that it does not completely fall apart under the ravages of time and heavy traffic, and operating it for maximum efficiency and safety. To search out, demonstrate, and implement viable approaches that will help solve these problems will challenge the ingenuity, abilities to deal with people, and staying power of all in the years ahead.

Modern Highway Development

Posted by aditya | 10:52 AM | , , | 0 comments »


The period from 1920 at least into the late 1970s might well be called the "automobile age/' for during this period highway transportation assumed a dominant role in America and the rest of the developed world. These countries can well be described as "nations on wheels. A 15-fold increase in several measures of highway activity from 1920 to 1979 and a tripling between 1950 and 1979. .
Because of inflation, the plot of highway expenditures on is not re¬alistic. In the years from 1950 to 1979, the dollar cost of appropriate units of highway construction and maintenance quadrupled. This is a geometric in¬crease of about 5% per year. Unfortunately, inflation continues and at a consid¬erably higher, rate.

To give added perspective on the effects of inflation, expenditures converted to 1977 dollars.This illustrates among other things that real expenditures for highways were substantially lower in the late 1970s than in the 1960s, in spite of substantial" increases in highway use. Values taken from this cost curve and that for motor vehicle registration show that the real annual expenditure for highways per motor vehicle, stated in 1977 dollars, had fallen from about $270 to $160 between 1950 and 1979.
It also shows that during the 1920 to 1979 period, road and street mileage increased relatively little, possibly 20%. This growth resulted mainly because'new roads and streets were built to serve areas where land use became more intensive, plus the addition of a relatively small mileage of major arteries, including freeways, on new alignments. 

From 1920 to 1935; highway development was focused primarily on the completion of a network of all-weather rural roads comparable to the street sys¬tems undertaken by local governments. By 1935 cross-country travel by auto¬mobile in almost any direction was possible. Since 1935 highway activities in rural areas have been devoted mainly to an attempt to provide facilities of higher standards and with greater capacity and load-carrying ability. During the same period, increasing attention has been focused on urban areas, which have been struck simultaneously by rapidly increasing population, lower population densities resulting from a "flight to the suburbs/' and a shift from mass transportation to the private automobile. Indications are that only minor additions to road mileage will be made in the future.

History Highway At The Railroad Era

Posted by aditya | 10:47 AM | , | 1 comments »


The extension of turnpikes in the United States was abruptly halted by the development of the railroads. In 1830 Peter Cooper constructed America's first steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb, which at once demonstrated its superiority over horse-drawn vehicles. Rapid growth of the railroad for transportation over long distance followed. Cross-country turnpike construction practically ceased, and many already completed fell into disuse. Rural roads served mainly as feeders for the railroads; improvements primarily led to the nearest railroad station and were made largely by local authorities and were to low standards. However, the improvement of city streets progressed at a somewhat faster pace. Also, the development of the electric trolley in 1885 launched the trend toward public transportation.

Regarding highway development before 1900, federal road officials stated that6
At the end of the century, approximately 300 years after first settlement, the United States could claim little distinction because of the character of its roads.

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw the improvement of the motor vehicle from a "rich man's toy" to a fairly dependable method for transporting persons and goods. There were strong demands not only from farmers but from bicyclists through the League of American Wheelmen for rural road improvement, largely for roads a few miles in length connecting outlying farms with towns and railroad stations. This development has been aptly described as "getting the farmer out of the mud." Great improvements also were made on city streets.
In this period it was recognized that road improvement was a matter of fed¬eral and state concern rather than of purely local interest to be dealt with by county and city governing bodies. Federal and state highway organizations were established and small amounts of money appropriated by Congress and the state governments to deal with road problems.


History Of Highways

Posted by aditya | 6:02 PM | , , | 1 comments »

The Romans bound their empire together with an extensive system of roads radiating in many directions from Rome. Some of these early roads were .of elaborate construction. For example, the Appian Way, built southward about 312 B.C., illustrates one of the procedures used by the Romans. First.a trench was excavated to such a depth that the finished surface would be, at ground level. The pavement was placed in three courses: a layer of -small broken stones, a layer of small stones mixed with mortar and firmly tamped into place, and a wearing course of massive stone blocks, set and bedded in mortar. Many of these roads are still in existence after 2000 years.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, road building became a lost art. It was not until the eighteenth century that Tresaguet (1716—1796) in France developed improved construction methods that at a later time, .under Napoleon, made pos­sible a great system of French roads. Highway development in England followed soon after. MacAdam (1756-1836) in particular was outstanding. A road surface that bears his name is still used.

Although little significant road building, as such, was done in England before the eighteenth century, the foundations of English and thus American highway law were being laid. Early Saxon laws imposed an obligation on all lands to perform three necessary duties: repair roads and bridges; maintain castles and garrisons; and aid in repelling invasion. Soon after the Norman conquest it was written that the king's highway was "a sacred thing, and he who has occupied any part thereof by exceeding the boundaries and limits of his land is said to have made encroachment on the King himself/' Very early, applications of this law made clear that ownership of the roads actually was vested in all persons who wished to use them. Other statutes, dating as far back as the thirteenth cen­tury, required abutting property owners to drain the road and clip any bordering hedges, and -to refrain from fencing, plowing, or from planting trees,'blishes, or shrubs closer than specified distances from the center of carriageways;’ In these and other early statutes can be seen the rudiments of such presfent-day cbric'epts as the government's responsibility for highways, the rights of the public to use them without interference, and the obligations of and restrictions on the owners of abutting property.