Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the EvidenceMcAdam, John Loudon
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Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the Evidence
McAdam, John Loudon
Macadam roads; Roads -- Great Britain
In what manner do you think the extra toll for overweight ought to be
regulated; whether by the weight, or by the number of horses used,
without regard to the weight?—I think by the weight most certainly;
unless the object is to discourage the breed of small horses, and
encourage the over-loading and straining, of horses of all sizes. The
number of horses is a very imperfect measure, or rather no measure at
all of the injury done to the roads; for a load of three tons, drawn by
one horse, injures the road as much, to say the least of it, as if two
horses were used. It is not out of place to mention the extreme
disproportion between the penalties for overweight, and the injuries
which they are meant to compensate for, or to prevent; particularly when
this over-loading is the effect of ignorance, which is almost always the
case. When the tolls are in the hands of trustees, the penalty is almost
always reduced; a proof that that fixed by law is exorbitant; but when
the tolls are farmed, and the trustees do not reserve the power of
mitigating the penalty, the poor carman has less chance of being saved
perhaps from ruin.
_Jovis, 1º die Aprilis, 1819._
Mr. _James Dean_, called in; and Examined.
What is your profession?—I am a land agent and civil engineer, and am
occasionally employed to solicit bills in parliament as an agent.
Where do you reside?—I reside in London about half the year, and the
other half in Devonshire.
As an engineer, have you had the means of becoming acquainted with the
roads of the kingdom?—About twenty years since, I had the appointment of
surveyor to the trustees of the turnpike roads from Oxford to Henley
upon Thames, and from Dorchester to Abingdon, in Berkshire; since then I
have been employed about several roads in Devonshire and Cornwall, and,
latterly, in surveying and reporting on an extensive district of the
roads in Somersetshire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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