Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1910 — GOOD ROADS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOOD ROADS

Better Hoad, (or Illinois. The attitude of the new legislative committee on good roads is encouragingly shown in the initial declaration of Representative Lantz, its secre- «. tary, says the Chicago* Record-Herald. Enough money for road making ahd bridge building is levied by the State, hb says, to give It the best and most comprehensive system of public highways in the Union, were the funds but legitimately and economically expended. To bring into clear light the faults of the present extravagant and haphazard regime, the committee proposes to investigate the methods of the highway commissioners of every county in the State.' Preliminary reports already received from county clerks and county treasurers give some idea of the general situation and foreshadow the nature and extent of the needed reforms. The 1909 tax levy for road and bridge purposes in the entire State amounts to nearly $8,000,000, and the claim is made that though the incompetence and lack of co-ordination fostered by the present obsolete procedure nearly three-quarters of the sum Is wasted. Nature is rather against the cause of good roads in Illinois. The soil is unfavorable and stone is scarce. All the more need, therefore, to work on some unified and systematized plan and to utilize such materials as exist. Abundant materials, as a fact, do exist In the debris of the drainage channel.

The old plan of “working out” the tax, once so widely prevalent, is now discredited. The newer idea of Stats aid under a State commission is everywhere gaining ground. This feature is prominent in the New York highway law of 1909, nd it has a place in the plan now shaping for submission to the legislature of Wisconsin. New York, with six State divisions, each under its own engineer, and all of these under a State commission with five bureaus, offers to townships from 50 to 100 per cent of the amount of appropriations they may themselves make. Wisconsin is considering the division of expenses among State, county and township, leaving the initiative with the latter.

Our own legislative committee will probably report that there is good reason for doing away with the 4,839 commissioners now In control of the State’s roads and highways. It may propose a county engineer to have charge of road construction in each county, with a State engineer to coordinate their work. This scheme seems rather simple when compared with the elaborate plan lately launched in the State of New York, but would doubtless lead to a marked improvement of the present situation.