v
Stephenson’s great revolution was begun in 1829. The great Holyhead Road was completed in 1830. The coincidence of dates is significant. England developed immediately an immense system of railways. Not only was she twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in the business, but she alone, for a long time, could produce railways. The railways on the Continent had to be built often by English engineers and always upon an English model. The transformation which this effected in the national life was so rapid that it warped judgment. Men began to talk as though the road would fall out of use. It was the same sort of exaggeration as led people about ten years ago to tell us that shortly horses would no longer be seen in the streets of London or even on the country roads.
The introduction of the railway had two deplorable effects upon the economic life of England, each of which was grave, and one of which we must, if we can, immediately remedy on peril of decline. Neither of them can be remedied save at a new expense of energy: (1) It killed the canals, (2) It killed all the schemes for widening, straightening, and rebuilding the national road system; while upon the Continent, and especially in France, the great broad, straight roads of the eighteenth century formed the model continuously applied, so that the most recent examples to-day are in the same tradition as those of two hundred years ago and yet amply fulfil their function. Here the whole story of our roads from the middle and the end of the nineteenth century and on to the beginning of this century is the story of improving the surface while keeping to the old winding and narrowness. Here and there we have had extensions of space which create really new roads in the neighbourhood of towns, especially as exits from towns, but nowhere as yet have we a complete scheme for the remodelling of a road in the fashion whereby, a century ago, the great Holyhead Road was remodelled.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FUTURE
A New Vehicle Compelling us to Make New Roads: Arterial Roads for the New Traffic: The Five Necessities of these Roads: Ways and Means: A National Fund: Taxation according to Fuel Used: The Question of the Land Contiguous to the New Roads.