The real point of Macadam in our road history is his intense devotion to his task. He was one of those men who, having seen clearly a principle which others have also seen, and which, indeed, should be obvious, so emphasizes it and represents it that he brings it into practice where other men would have abandoned it. The obvious principle which Macadam grasped and reiterated to weariness was the principle that perpetual legislation and experiment in the type of vehicle best suited to a road was of less importance than the surface and weight-carrying capacity of the Road. Get the best road you can first, and after that discuss the traffic along it. In certain technical details posterity has criticized it—in its insufficient allowance of foundation, for instance; in its postulate that a well-drained natural surface was sufficient to bear anything in the way of road traction. Such criticism can only be conducted by experts, but it is certainly true that Macadam transformed the surface of the English Road, not perhaps by any special or novel conception of his own either in the material or in the sizes of that material, but rather in the unique insistence with which he carried on his whole task.
Just as the Post Office had been the Government department for using Telford, so the Board of Works was the Government department backing Macadam.
These two men between them, and these two departments between them, had remade the English Road, and the system was fairly launched towards such a change as would perhaps have given us a completely transformed road system, the value of which we should have appreciated when the new traffic of the internal combustion engine presented us with the problems of the present day.
For instance, Telford himself had suggested—and there was nearly achieved—a reformed stretch of the Great North Road between Peterborough and York on a straight line, avoiding the windings of the old trace, and twenty miles shorter: worthy to rank in every way with the great roads of the Continent. This, had it been realized, might well have proved only the first of a great number of similar constructions, until we should have had all the great centres of England united in the same fashion and a habit of broad, straight, and excellent roads established. Unfortunately, a great historical accident intervened to sidetrack the whole business. It was an example of the way in which the advantages of spontaneity and inventiveness, making normally for the benefit of the community as a whole, will, if there is no central direction, do incidental hurt which has later to be repaired, if at all, at great expense of energy. The reason we have to-day the innumerable narrow winding roads of England, the lack of any general system, the absence of any system of good roads from London to the ports (to this day half the exits from London are blocked by absurd “bottle necks,” the most notorious of which, of course, is that on the West road, which is now at last being remedied), is that the English genius produced the locomotive.
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.