Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1916 — KEEPING GOOD ROADS GOOD [ARTICLE]

KEEPING GOOD ROADS GOOD

Ample Provision for Maintenance Should Be Part of Road System. Keeping good roads good is the most important task in connection with an improved highway system, once the construction work is. completed. In the United States in the past this task usually has been negleced, the improved roads in many instances being allowed to deteriorate until they became almost impassable, when they were, at heavy cost, rebuilt. The states and counties are now coming to recognize the need of careful and thoroughgoing maintenance, however, is indicated by studies of county road systems in different sections of the country recently made by the office of public roads and rural engineering of the department of agriculture. While some of the eight counties in which intensive studies were made were found to have no provisions for maintenance and others were found to pay for upkeep of the roads out of bond-issue funds, thus creating a debt that would outlive the temporary improvement by many years, two counties in widely separated states were found in which maintenance conditions were practically all that could be desired. In Mississippi, it was found, there is a state law requiring that a special annual tax of at least 1 mill shall be levied for the upkeep of all roads constructed by means'" of bond issues, the fund to be kept separate from all other funds and to be used for maintenance only. Instead of the deterioration taking place on the roads of some of the counties in other states on which examinations were made, it was found that in Lauderdale county, Mississippi, roads built several years ago and maintained from the special fund have actually improved since their completion. The county roads of Franklin county, New York, it was found, are maintained with a contribution of 50 per cent by the state and under direct state supervision. As a result of this system, the roads have been kept up to their condition on completion. While provisions for maintenance were on the whole not satisfactory in the counties of the other states in which studies were made, this condition since has been remedied in Virginia by the passage of a state law providing that an annual tax of not less than 3 per cent of the aniount of bonds issued shall be levied to provide a maintenance fund for bond-built roads.

The existence of a regulation tending to lessen damage to roads and so to reduce maintenance costs was revealed by the studies in Spotsylvania county; Virginia, where the county supervisors had passed an ordinance placing a relatively low limit on loads that may be hauled in wagons fitted with narrow tires and a considerably higher limit on loads for wide-tired wagons. As a result, most of the wagons using the roads of the county have been fitted with tires ranging from three to six inches.