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
Are you of opinion, that it would be attended with any advantage to the
roads, to encourage, by any regulation or exemption from tolls, the use
of carriages, varying the length of their axles, so as to prevent their
running in the same tracks?—I am of opinion it would be very beneficial,
and have particularly so stated to the Board of Agriculture, with an
example of the tolls over a new road, which are so regulated in
Derbyshire: in addition to which, some inducement in the abatement of
tolls, might be made to those carriages, which now generally use single
shafts like the farmers’ carts and waggons, on their adopting double
shafts, so that all their horses may draw in pairs; this being
applicable even to three-horse carts, as far as concerns the two
foremost. Stage-coaches, for the reasons here alluded to, as they do all
draw in pairs, and very seldom follow in any previous and deep rut, do
far less damage to the roads than otherwise would happen; their springs
also, and swiftness of motion, contributing, very materially, to
lessening their wear of the road.
Are you of opinion that any advantage would be derived from the general
commutation of statute duty?—I have long been of opinion that the whole
principle of statute duty, as now regulated, is erroneous; labour in
kind should entirely cease: and the surveyor collect a more equable rate
on all property in his township; the present regulations for calling out
the teams and making of a road rate, are so complicated, as to be above
the capacity of the majority of parish surveyors, who in most or all
instances collect the rates for the turnpike roads as well as the
private roads.
Will you state your opinion of the statute labour, as it particularly
applies to turnpike roads?—In all the local road acts which I have
examined, one half of the statute duty of each township is apportioned
to each toll road which passes through any part or corner of that
township, which in innumerable instances, is very highly prejudicial; a
due proportion of the fair road rate, as already mentioned, should be
payable to each toll road, where there are more than one in the
township, in proportion (or nearly so, as the quarter sessions might
order) to all the lengths of all the roads within the township which it
contributes to repair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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