SAVING BY GOOD ROADS

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12093, 21 March 1925, Page 14

SAVING BY GOOD ROADS

COST SOON REPAID. As a result of a survey of traffio made on the Boston Post road ip Connecticut, the United States Department of Agriculture has issued a bulletin showing how a good, hard surface road soon repays its cost. The Connecticut survey showed that the average weight of vehicles and com-, modifies passing over the road each day was more than 1500 gross tons! Using . figures on the cost of hauling worked out by economists at the lowa Experiment Station, it was shown that the cost of moving this traffio. over a dirt road would be 26.44 dollars, while it cost only U. 70 dollars a day to move the same tonnage over a paved road. This was a daily saving of 14.74 dollars, and on the basis of 300 days ? year the actual saving in fuel for mov ing the tonnge would he 4422 dollars If the paved highway cost 40,000 dol lars per mile, which is the general average,' the saving above interest charges would pay for the road in less than

twelve years, the statisticians report. They point out that these figures do not take into acoount other sayings in the cost of operating commercial vehicles, or the value of the heavy movement of passenger care.