Highways and Highway TransportationChatburn, George R.
History
Highways and Highway Transportation
Chatburn, George R.
Roads; Transportation
However, transportation and travel continued to improve. On the main
roads “waggons” were employed to transport goods and stage coaches
for people, while pack animals and riding horses were used on less
frequented trails and roads. Four and six horses were necessary to pull
a carriage or a coach “because with a smaller number there was great
danger of sticking fast in the mire.” A diligence ran between London
and Oxford in two days, but in 1669 it was announced that the “Flying
Coach would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset.” The
heads of the university after solemn deliberation gave consent and the
experiment proved successful. The rival university at Cambridge, not
to be outdone, set up a diligence to run from Cambridge to London in
one day. Soon flying coaches were carrying passengers to other points.
Posts were established for the change of horses and longer distances
essayed. This mode of traveling was extolled by contemporaneous writers
“as far superior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world.” It
is not to be thought that these advances in rapid transportation were
without objectors. According to Macaulay,
It was vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal
to the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that the
Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen, would
cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and
down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by
hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted travelers had been in
the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longer pay any
rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in
winter; that the passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and
crying children; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late
that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early
that it was impossible to get breakfast.
Objections of this character have been made against every innovation
and advancement in travel and transportation to the present day when
the air-plane is beginning to attract notice as an economic vehicle.
Laws were then demanded and passed, as they are now, to regulate power
and speed, accommodations and rates, and multifarious other things
which might affect the privileges or profits of those interested in
older methods, as well as laws for the protection and safety of the
general public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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