A NEW PAYING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LVII, Issue LVII, 9 April 1910, Page 7

A NEW PAYING.

What the world stands in imminent need of at the present juncture is the uprising of a modern Macadam who shall solve, once and for all, the prouiem what to do with our roads. AY ear and tear upon public highways on. account of motor cars and heavy vehicles ■of other kinds equally destructive of road surface, were never so severe as in our own time, and so far no definite system of improved road-making has been evolved to meet the increased demands imposed by the traffic of these later days. It was to France that we owed our first taste of the fierce joys of motoring, and it accords with the eternal fitness of things that we should be compelled to look to Prance for a specific tor bad and doubtful roads depreciated in wearing quality by the conquering march of the automobile and its vehicular allies. The French people are constantly experimenting with ! every conceivable form of new paving materials, and one of the most promising of these is an asphalt-rubber combination which is now being tested with considerable success in Paris, Lyons and Marseilles, in combination with rubber, asphalt is deprived of many of its disadvantages. According to M. Mazerolle, the French engineer who presided at the International Road Conference held in Paris recently, excellent results have been, obtained irom the new material. Its chief advantages are the facility with which it may be laid, and the simple utensils required for laying it. Best of all, it 1 can be applied cold. The process appears to be a simple one. The two substances are placed together in a special mixing apparatus. The asphalt is introduced in the form of a fine powder, and the rubber swollen and softened by a solvent. The resultant material is a brown powder which requires only compression to settle and harden quickly. The goodroads prospect thus afforded is a delectable one, but with rubber at 11s 6d a pound, the luxury is an almost unthinkable one at the present time. In the course of a few years' timej perhaps, when^the plantations of the numerous rubber companies that are being floated with, such feverish haste at Home come into profit, rubber should be cheap enough to permit of its almost universal use in the direction named. That is, of course, always supposing that the scores of new companies do j not all prove to be of the wild-cat description.