HIGHWAY PROBLEMS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17720, 23 March 1923, Page 5

HIGHWAY PROBLEMS.

CANAL ACROSS SCOTLAND. Much is being talked and much writton in . the London daily l'ress about canal and road plans lor providing work lor 'the unemployed. A representative of the "Christian Science Monitor" therefore called at the offices of tho Ministry of Transport to ask as to the probabilities of any of these schemes materiaUsing unUer Government auspices. • •

One plan is that which has gained a certain iamount of publicity turough a opoech of Sir lan .Hamilton in wnich he advocated the construction of a canal to link Up the two great Scottish firths the Firth of Forth on the east, with the firth of Clyde on the west, This scheme, it was pointed out» would probably bo of far greater, strategical than commercial value. The,. idea was propounded during the war, but nothing came of it, probably as it was felt th.at the war. was bound to be concluded before the canal could be.

Asking as to road schemes and Lord Montagu's suggestion of a £0,000,000 dollars loan for new roads, the 'Christian Science Monitor" was told that, like everything else, the matter could be boiled down to one of economics. The Road Board had not goi more money 4han it could spend, and if it were saddled with a 60,000,000 dollar debt to pay back or on which interest would have to be paid, it would not help matters. It is quite recognised by the Ministry of Transport that the. whole question of road construction and maintenance- is in a state of transition, owing to existing roads being used to a greater extent and to carry greater loads than was ever dreamed of T>y the original makers. In a, paper read before "the Institute of Transport a few months ago, Colonel Bressey stated that the road engineer had to give proof of unexampled adaptability in order to transform the immemorial road system aa cheaply and rapidly as possible to meet tho demands of forms of transport bearing no resemblance to the traffic of thirty years ago. A few instances sufficed to show this. J On the Queen's Drive road, out of Liv- I erpool, originally constructed for light vehicles only, 1,600,000 tons passed in a year. On portions of the Great North road the traffic in the last ten years had increased by 200 per cent. In and around London the London General Omnibus- Company is running 300 motor omnibuses with an, aggregate hor,se*pow. er of 100,000 and carrying nearly 1,000,000,000 passengers yearly. Stretches of road are in hand »H over the country. ' One of these/ the Roman road from London to Dover, is vory interesting, as it has taken over JBOO years to complete; the missing! length over Swanscbmbe Hill is being restored where the gradients were made so steep that horses could not face them, thus causing the road to fall. into disuse and ultimately to vanish from view. '■ /'" ' '

Bound up ; with new and improved roads is "the question of the materials from wliich; they are to be,! made, and these range from, the hardness and solidity of reinfofced .concrete to tho comparative softness .and elasticity of rubber. Only very Small _ and tentative experiments are beings made with rubber, and it is, of course; the very opposite of the..idea of the complete rigidity airired at with cdncrete. ■i'.'lt is curious to reflect that the once all: important connexion between road and horse is becoming a side issue, tho figures for traffic pn the aforementioned Liverpool Queen's Drive road, showing that 96.3 per cent, of this is motor driven. Still the.horse has to be considered and here it would seem certain that the remedy for slipping has to be sought more in new inventions for'horses' shoes than in road surface,' •'.'..'