Now, the most obvious factor is fuel. One way and another, the fuel a man uses for his machine is the nearest test to the use he makes of the Road. A heavy weight needs more fuel, great speed and consequently greater wear and tear needs more fuel, and greater horse-power needs more fuel. The curves are, of course, not parallel. You can get equal speeds between heavy and light for nearly the same consumption of fuel. One type of machine will do more harm to the road surface for every gallon of fuel than another, and so on. But if you want to have easy revenue simplicity in taxation is vital: surely the taxation of fuel is the simplest and most direct method. It is easily collected. It does away with all chance of confusion. It can be imposed at source and in bulk, and it has that invaluable quality which has been often lost sight of in the last two generations: that it is paid gradually and at will and yet paid inevitably. So long, of course, as a false distinction is maintained between the commercial and the private use of vehicles you will have gross anomalies and injustice. To draw the line between economic waste in the use of the modern internal combustion engine and what is part of the general and normal life of the community is impossible. It would be better were the distinction to be wholly removed. We do not ask a man who takes a ticket from Birmingham to London whether he is going for fun or folly, for business or necessity. Men pay the same price for the ticket whatever the motive of their journey. It is an absurd anomaly as things now stand that the man who travels in a little Ford car from one town to another with, say, two members of his family--and travels therefore much more cheaply than he could upon the railway--should pay the rent of a house for the privilege of having his car, while the heavy vehicle of a tradesman who is distributing advertising matter--sheer economic loss to the community--should tear up the road for nothing. (3) The grant for the new roads should include the purchase, if not of a continuous belt along each side, at least of blocks of land, especially in the neighbourhood of existing communications, near railway stations, near villages or other centres now established, etc. The price to be determined by arbitration upon the old price basis before the scheme of the Road was developed. If this were done the great difficulty for _certain_ purposes (not residential, but other) of using these sites would accrue to the public purse and would gradually relieve the cost of construction.