Scribd
Upload
62 views4 pages

Highway History

The Romans built an extensive network of over 50,000 miles of roads throughout their vast empire to facilitate military, economic and administrative functions. Their roads were constructed in a standardized manner, with deep foundations and multiple layers including large stones, concrete and stone slabs to create durable, wide roads. John Loudon McAdam further advanced road construction in the late 18th/early 19th century by developing a new technique using a thin layer of compacted small stones without mortar that could support traffic on a properly drained surface, establishing the principles still used today for paved roads.

Uploaded by

Joyce Espiritu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
62 views4 pages

Highway History

The Romans built an extensive network of over 50,000 miles of roads throughout their vast empire to facilitate military, economic and administrative functions. Their roads were constructed in a standardized manner, with deep foundations and multiple layers including large stones, concrete and stone slabs to create durable, wide roads. John Loudon McAdam further advanced road construction in the late 18th/early 19th century by developing a new technique using a thin layer of compacted small stones without mortar that could support traffic on a properly drained surface, establishing the principles still used today for paved roads.

Uploaded by

Joyce Espiritu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

The Roman roads

The greatest systematic road builders of the ancient world were the
Romans, who were very conscious of the military, economic, and
administrative advantages of a good road system. The Romans drew
their expertise mainly from the Etruscans—particularly in cement
technology and street paving—though they probably also learned skills
from the Greeks (masonry), Cretans, Carthaginians (pavement
structure), Phoenicians, and Egyptians (surveying). Concrete made
from cement was a major development that permitted many of Rome’s
construction advances.

The Romans began their road-making task in 334 BC and by the peak
of the empire had built nearly 53,000 miles of road connecting their
capital with the frontiers of their far-flung empire. Twenty-nine great
military roads, the viae militares, radiated from Rome. The most
famous of these was the Appian Way. Begun in 312 BC, this road
eventually followed the Mediterranean coast south to Capua and then
turned eastward to Beneventum, where it divided into two branches,
both reaching Brundisium (Brindisi). From Brundisium the Appian
Way traversed the Adriatic coast to Hydruntum, a total of 410 miles
from Rome.

The typical Roman road was bold in conception and construction.


Where possible, it was built in a straight line from one sighting point
to the next, regardless of obstacles, and was carried over marshes,
lakes, ravines, and mountains. In its highest stage of development, it
was constructed by excavating parallel trenches about 40 feet apart to
provide longitudinal drainage—a hallmark of Roman road
engineering. The foundation was then raised about three feet above
ground level, employing material taken from the drains and from the
adjacent cleared ground. As the importance of the road increased, this
embankment was progressively covered with a light bedding of sand or
mortar on which four main courses were constructed: (1)
the statumen layer 10 to 24 inches (250 to 600 millimetres) thick,
composed of stones at least 2 inches in size, (2) the rudus, a 9-inch-
thick layer of concrete made from stones under 2 inches in size, (3)
the nucleus layer, about 12 inches thick, using concrete made from
small gravel and coarse sand, and, for very important roads, (4)
the summum dorsum, a wearing surface of large stone slabs at least 6
inches deep. The total thickness thus varied from 3 to 6 feet. The width
of the Appian Way in its ultimate development was 35 feet. The two-
way, heavily crowned central carriageway was 15 feet wide. On each
side it was flanked by curbs 2 feet wide and 18 inches high and
paralleled by one-way side lanes 7 feet wide. This massive Roman road
section, adopted about 300 BC, set the standard of practice for the next
2,000 years.

ancient RomeAncient Roman road shown in cross section.Encyclopædia


Britannica, Inc.

The birth of the modern road

The master road builders

In Europe, gradual technological improvements in the 17th and 18th centuries saw
increased commercial travel, improved vehicles, and the breeding of better horses.
These factors created an incessant demand for better roads, and supply and invention
both rose to meet that demand. In 1585 the Italian engineer Guido Toglietta wrote a
thoughtful treatise on a pavement system using broken stone that represented a marked
advance on the heavy Roman style. In 1607 Thomas Procter published the first English-
language book on roads. The first highway engineering school in Europe, the School of
Bridges and Highways, was founded in Paris in 1747. Late in the 18th century the
Scottish political economist Adam Smith, in discussing conditions in England, wrote,
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the
remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of a
town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements.

Up to this time roads had been built, with minor modifications, to the heavy
Roman cross section, but in the last half of the 18th century the fathers of modern road
building and road maintenance appeared in France and Britain.

Trésaguet

In France, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet, an engineer from an engineering family,


became in 1764 engineer of bridges and roads at Limoges and in 1775 inspector general
of roads and bridges for France. In that year he developed an entirely new type of
relatively light road surface, based on the theory that the underlying natural formation,
rather than the pavement, should support the load. His standard cross section (shown in
the figure, top) was 18 feet wide and consisted of an eight-inch-thick course of uniform
foundation stones laid edgewise on the natural formation and covered by a two-inch
layer of walnut-sized broken stone. This second layer was topped with a one-inch layer
of smaller gravel or broken stone. In order to maintain surface levels, Trésaguet’s
pavement was placed in an excavated trench—a technique that made drainage a difficult
problem.

Cross sections of three 18th-century European roads, as designed by (top) Pierre Trésaguet,
(middle) Thomas Telford, and (bottom) John McAdam.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Telford
Thomas Telford, born of poor parents in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1757, was
apprenticed to a stone mason. Intelligent and ambitious, Telford progressed to
designing bridges and building roads. He placed great emphasis on two features: (1)
maintaining a level roadway with a maximum gradient of 1 in 30 and (2) building a
stone surface capable of carrying the heaviest anticipated loads. His roadways were 18
feet wide and built in three courses: (1) a lower layer, seven inches thick, consisting of
good-quality foundation stone carefully placed by hand (this was known as the Telford
base), (2) a middle layer, also seven inches thick, consisting of broken stone of two-inch
maximum size, and (3) a top layer of gravel or broken stone up to one inch thick.
(See figure, middle.)

McAdam

The greatest advance came from John Loudon McAdam, born in 1756 at Ayr in
Scotland. McAdam began his road-building career in 1787 but reached major heights
after 1804, when he was appointed general surveyor for Bristol, then the most important
port city in England. The roads leading to Bristol were in poor condition, and in 1816
McAdam took control of the Bristol Turnpike. There he showed that traffic could be
supported by a relatively thin layer of small, single-sized, angular pieces of broken stone
placed and compacted on a well-drained natural formation and covered by an
impermeable surface of smaller stones. He had no use for the masonry constructions of
his predecessors and contemporaries.

Drainage was essential to the success of McAdam’s method, and he required the
pavement to be elevated above the surrounding surface. The structural layer of broken
stone (as shown in the figure, bottom) was eight inches thick and used stone of two to
three inches maximum size laid in layers and compacted by traffic—a process adequate
for the traffic of the time. The top layer was two inches thick, using three-fourths- to
one-inch stone to fill surface voids between the large stones. Continuing maintenance
was essential.

Although McAdam drew on the successes and failures of others, his total structural
reliance on broken stone represented the largest paradigm shift in the history of road
pavements. The principles of the “macadam” road are still used today. McAdam’s
success was also due to his efficient administration and his strong view that road
managers needed skill and motivation.

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy