Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

FOOTNOTES

[212] In a paper presented, 1921, at the meeting of the Michigan State Good Roads Association.

[213] “The Principal Species of Wood,” by C. H. Snow, Wiley & Sons, New York.

[214] “Useful Trees for Roadside Planting,” a paper before the Michigan State Good Roads Association, 1921.

[215] “Forestry and Irrigation,” August, 1903.

[216] Snow: “The Principal Species of Wood.” 2d Ed., Wiley & Sons, N. Y.

[217] Op. cit.

[218] Congressional Record, Senate Doc. 156, Vol. V, 58th Cong.

[219] Op. cit.

[220] New Nature Library, Vol. III, p. 411, “The Tree Book,” by Julia E. Rogers. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1914.

[221] This Indian word seems to have been applied to many plants the leaves or bark of which was used for smoking.

CHAPTER XIII
AIDS AND ATTRACTIONS TO TRAFFIC AND TRAVEL

It is a well-recognized fact that pleasure riding constitutes by far the greater part of automobile riding. With ten million pleasure cars and two million trucks that is obvious, notwithstanding every pleasure car is used more or less for business.

Assuming that the pleasure cars average 3000 miles per year each, a conservative estimate, and that two-thirds of this is purely for pleasure,[222] and that the average number of passengers is 2¹⁄₂, there results the almost inconceivable number of fifty billion passenger miles. If one person did all that traveling he would have to circle the earth two million times, or about one circuit every quarter of a minute. Each of the hundred million people in the United States, therefore, joy rides annually to the extent of 500 miles, at an expense of about $50, one-fourth of which is for gasoline and oil. Or, stating it another way the expense of this pleasure, recreation, outing, release from business cares, is about $1 per week per person.[223]

This hardly seems to be too much for the returns received, but if it is it cannot be helped. The automobile is here. It is here to stay. It is going to be used more and more. And economy is not the most stimulating element toward its use. Like the telephone, it is rapidly being emancipated from the luxury class and is establishing itself among the necessaries.

This being true, the road must not only be made usable in an economic sense but must also cater to the comfort and pleasure of the user. “Make business a pleasure and pleasure is business.” This means new developments not only in the road construction, surfacing, maintenance, but in the many other things that always follow improvements. The road was made smooth and hard and level because larger loads at less expense could be hauled; they were widened and the curves flattened that there might be more speed, thus cutting down the cost of transportation. All these things came along as a matter of economy, but at the same time they brought increased safety and much pleasure to the traveler. Now the beautification of the highway, discussed in the last chapter, while primarily for pleasure, has been found to increase the use of the road and bring money in new ways to the pockets of many. The beautiful and the scenic are truly economic assets of great worth. California will realize many times over from the tourist traffic alone the cost of her wonderful roads. The famous Columbia River Highway will return to Oregon again and again its cost through tourists and other pleasure riders attracted to it as bees to sweets by the lure of its scenic vistas. Standing upon the streets of my home city it is an unusual day if I do not see license tags from a half dozen states within a few minutes, sometimes ranging from coast to coast and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.

Think what it means to a community to have all these people pass through it. If they have good roads to travel upon, few hardships and a hospitable treatment along the way, they are bound to feel kindly toward the community, speak well of it when they go home. This, unintentionally perhaps, suggests to others to travel over the same roads, and some, no doubt, will return for the purpose of taking up their abode in a community so hospitable and up to date in its activities. If there are factories that make articles for sale the traveler having seen their signs and buildings as he passes by feels a kindly interest in them ever after. The manufactories, the stores, wholesale and retail, the farms, and all others will directly or indirectly benefit from the travel and interchange of social courtesies brought about by it.

The direct sale of goods and supplies, the sums spent at garages and hotels constitute a very small part of the benefits received from those who use the roads, yet it is by no means negligible, for “many mickles make a muckle.” It may be sordid to think of the money brought in by these persons, and taken out in almost equal amounts by our own travelers, but the money certainly is put into circulation and flows from those who have more to those who have less, balancing, as the rains do the rivers, the backward flow through various channels from those who have less to those who have more. If the transportation of commodities and goods from market to market over the country can be likened to the life blood of the human body, then the passage of citizens from place to place is like the lymphatic circulation repairing wastes due to ambition, greed, and ignorance.