Maintenance.—Even under favorable conditions as regards kind and amount of traffic the macadam road requires constant maintenance. The first effect of traffic will be to brush away the fine materials used for bonding the surface, thus exposing the larger stones in such a way that they are rather easily loosened and removed from the surface by wheels and the hoofs of animals. This finer material must be replaced as fast as it is removed so as to protect the surface. Either stone dust or clayey sand may be used, but clay if used alone is likely to be sticky when wet and prove to be worse than the condition it was expected to correct. In time, ruts and depressions will appear, either as the gradual effect of wear, which will inevitably effect some portions of the surface more than others, or on account of subsidence of the foundation. Uneven places are repaired by first loosening the stone, then restoring the cross section by adding new material and tamping or rolling it in place.
If a bituminous coating has been applied, it will eventually peel off in places and these places must be recoated as soon as practicable.
Eventually the surface will be worn to such an extent that an entirely new wearing surface must be added. This is done by loosening the entire surface to a depth of 3 or 4 inches and then adding a new layer of broken stone. The loosening is sometimes accomplished by means of heavy spikes inserted in the roller wheels, and at others by means of a special tool known as a scarifier.
The new surface is placed and rolled in precisely the same manner as the wearing surface of the original construction, but the layer may not be as thick as the original wearing course. A new course will not bond to the old surface unless the old macadam has been thoroughly broken up first.
Characteristics.—The water-bound macadam is a dusty, somewhat rough surface of low durability for rubber tired vehicles. It has long been the standard rural highway for steel tired vehicles, but cannot carry any considerable amount of motor traffic. It is easily repaired. When finished with a bituminous surface its durability is greatly increased and the dust is eliminated. It does not seem to be sufficiently rigid for truck traffic, unless placed on exceptionally good foundation.
Chapter VIII
CEMENT CONCRETE ROADS
The cement concrete road is one of the later developments in highway construction, but the type has had sufficient use to show that it is one of the satisfactory types for heavy mixed traffic, and, where the proper materials are available, it is one of the economical types of construction.