Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Western Star, Issue 374, 21 August 1880, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Wear of French Roads.—lt is slated in a French journal that the average yearly expense of maintenance of roads in France is about 31,000,000 fr. for 37,000 kilometres of national roads, 20,000,000 fr. for 41,000kilometres of departmental roads, and 75,000,000 fr., for 260,000 kilometres of parochial roads, without counting bridges orlarge rectifications. The breaking of stones and spreading them on the roads are nowalmost a science. The cost price of materials varies considerably in different departments, according to the means of access to resistant: rocks. On an average it is 6 fr. 70 c. thecubic m6tre for the whole of France, but itdescends to 3 fr. to 4 fr. in the mountainousresrions, such as the Alps, L’Ardfeohs. LTsfere; and it rises to 11 fr., 13 fr., and even 14 fr. in the plain country, as in Seine* et-Oise, La Marne and L’Aube. The wear is nearly proportional to the number of vehicles passing over the roads ; in L’Arl6ohe_ it is about double what it is in L’Aveyroav and in it is about four times as,much, with equal quality of materials. The statistics further show that, per kilometre and per 100 draught-horses the mean con«. sumption (of “ metal”) is about 23 cubic metres annually. It is calculated by some engineers that to keep the roads in a, thoroughly good condition, this proportion, be increased to 28 cubic metres, with, an additional expenditure of nearly 3,000,000fr. As matters stand, the consumption of road metal is about 1,326,000 cubic metres on the national roads. All this is bruised, and reduced to mud and dust every year by the wheels of vehicles and the hoofs of horses. Accumulated in a single heap, it would form a tower 130 metres in diameter and 100 metres in height. Equally spread over the whole surface of the national roads of France, it corresponds to an average wearing oat of - 9 mm. thickness.