Talk:Road/Archive 1

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Terminology Needs Work

I'm a person who's always been confused by, and interested in, the wide array of transit terms. This article would be a good place to address the differences between terms and define terms specifically. What differentiates a street from a road? Or a parkway? How about parkway/highway/expressway/thruway/super-highway etc. Most people think a highway is a divided high volume, multilane route like the interstate highway system, but in fact state and US highways are often regular 2 lane, non-divided roads without controlled access. Im not a road geek, I wish I was though! :) Maybe someone smarter than I in these specifics might want to help polish up this article.

This would be quite difficult actually. Usage differs between UK and US English, as well as regionally within the US. For example, pavement (US) is, generally, the material roads are made from. In the UK this would be macadam or the like. Pavement (UK) is a paved area reserved for pedestrian and/or bicycle(?) use. In the US these are sidewalks or bikeways/bike paths.
In the US a "highway" is a significant road maintained by a governmental body. "Significant" need not mean high-volume, it does mean important to connect significant places. There is the US Highway system, and US 66 was two lane for much of its fabled length. Here however, one trips over "route" which is often used when identifying a highway - hence "Route 66" for "US Highway 66." To the FHWA, interstates are "interstate routes" on the "federal aid highway system". Counties and states also maintain their "highways."
The origin of the word "highway" is probably pertinent as these were historically raised above the surrounding terrain to facilitate drainage. These are tougher to build and costlier to maintain, hence the need for government support, even if only authorizing a toll road. "I'll take the high-road and you take the low-road, and I'll get to where-ever it was in Scotland 'afore ye."
Other words are equally problematic. "Boulevard" in Michigan is a specific type of median-divided arterial. Left turns, the "boulevard left" in Detroit, involves going past the intersection in question, making a U-turn at a specially designated signalized location, returning to the intersection, and making a right. (This is the simplest high-capacity left turn layout available now, but does require real estate for the median.) In Chicago, a "boulevard" is one of the various tree-lined arterials connecting the various city parks created per the Burnham plan. Here left-turns are standard left-turn lanes.
US transportation engineers do formally differentiate between roadways based on traffic and use. These are:
  • Local Roads and Streets — Provide access to adjacent land (<500 vehicles per day)
  • Collectors — Carry traffic and provide access to adjacent land (8,000 - 10,000 vehicles per day)
  • Arterials — Carry intraurban traffic for more than one mile (<25,000 vehicles per day)
  • Principle Arterials — Carry intraurban traffic for several miles (<40,000 vehicles per day)
  • Limited-Access Highways/Freeways — Carry intraurban traffic for long distances and intercity traffic (40,000 vehicles per day and up.)
"Super-Highway" isn't a technical term, but could easily describe freeways with ten or more lanes carrying 200,000 vehicles per day and up. (I've seen traffic counts in the 300,000 ADT range. I-90/94 Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago.)
An interesting place to go for background, although it won't clarify all the nomenclature and the perspective is American, might be the Standard Handbood for Civil Engineers, McGraw-Hill. There are chapters on "Community and Regional Planning" and "Highway Engineering."
MARussellPESE 19:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

A brief History of roads in England

In the early years of the twentieth century the antiquarian Alfred Watkins published a book called ‘The Old Straight Track’ which claimed to have discovered network of prehistoric trackways in Britain. These would have been the earliest roads in England and Watkins’ evidence was based on the number of known points between which straight lines would produce a walkable way over mountain passes, fordable rivers, and so on. Many of these ‘known points’ had survived as sites of Churches, which Watkins showed were built on prehistoric meeting places or crossroads, or as mark stones visible as landmarks. The interesting feature of these ways was their directness, many of them being straight lines for miles.

The oldest surviving definite routes are the Iron Age tracks such as the Icknield Way and the Ridge Way, which follow ancient trade routes along dry ridges and escarpments, above the wet or thickly wooded valleys, which before Roman Times would have been infested with wolves and bears. Some of these routes offer a straighter and shorter route than modern main roads, such as the Earl’s Way which was used to carry salt from Cheshire to the river Trent and so to the east coast.

The first extensive single system of roads in England was the famous network of Roman Roads. They were also the first roads in England to be constructed to produce a durable firm all-weather surface. Since the Roman authority had absolute control over the country the roads were built in straight lines as far as possible, notable examples being the northward stretch north of Lincoln and the east-west stretch to the east of what is now Telford. The roads were designed for marching troops, and in some cases (Blackstone Edge, east of Manchester, a surviving length of original pavement) steep gradients were tolerated for the sake of keeping the shortest distance.

Many of the Roman Roads remained in use for centuries after they ceased to be maintained by the Roman authorities. The Anglo-Saxons gave them names such as Watling Street, Ermine Street, and so on, but it is important to remember that these were not the original names. Considerable lengths of Watling Street remain as the routes of modern roads, notably the A5 trunk road. Others have been by-passed by the differing routes needed by industrial Britain. Much of the Fosse Way, for example, once the main South-west to North-East road, is now narrow country lanes. The definitive book on Roman Roads is ‘Roman Roads in Britain ‘ by Ivan D Margery (2 vols, OUP) published in the 1950s and long out of print.

After the Roman road-building period, no new roads were constructed in England until the late eighteenth century. This astonishing gap can be explained by the durability of the Roman Roads (King Harold II used them for his famous forced march in 1066), and by the political and financial instability of England during much of the period, which precluded the orderly planning and building of new roads.

As the Industrial period flourished the poor state of English roads prompted the setting up of Turnpike Trusts to raise money locally for the building of new roads and resurfacing of existing ones. Thomas Telford was one of the engineers who made his name in this way. Among his achievements was the North Wales coast road, built to assist journeys to and from Ireland when it became part of the United Kingdom in 1800. Telford designed two suspension bridges over the Conway and the Menai Strait. Other turnpikes were built to link canals, over land unsuitable for canal building. The term ‘turnpike’ referred to the gates positioned at stages along the roads, which were opened to traffic on payment of a toll to pay for the road maintenance. After centuries of free roads, these were extremely unpopular, and even today any proposal to reintroduce toll roads in England is greeted with controversy.

With the development of railways, which could transport passengers and freight in a small fraction of the time taken for a road journey, the turnpikes soon fell into disuse and many roads were as bad as they had been at any time since the Romans left. Eventually, the economic health of the country recovered to the state where county councils were prosperous enough to afford substantial improvements to roads. Many of the solidly-constructed stone bridges over rivers extant today, date from this period , the later part of the nineteenth century. The use of tar and stone chippings was also developed to provide smoother, more durable surfaces.

After the First World War thousands of war-surplus lorries and vans were released onto the civil market and for the first time many businesses, large and small, could afford to own and operate motor vehicles. The private car market also expanded from its very small base before the war. This expansion in motor traffic prompted new roads on new routes, for example the Kingston By-Pass in Surrey, taking the Portsmouth Road (now the A3) away from Kingston-on-Thames, and the Liverpool to East Lancashire Road (now the A580) linking Liverpool and Manchester. These were the first ‘Dual carriageway’ roads in England, where traffic in opposing directions was separated by a central barrier or ‘reservation’. Between then and the present day many existing trunk and main roads have been enlarged to dual carriageway, and several completely new roads were built in the 1950s, such as the A556 Northwich by-pass in Cheshire, linking Manchester with North Wales.

During the 1930s all but minor roads in the UK were numbered in zones. Trunk and main roads were given numbers of one, two, or three digits, in descending order of importance preceded by the letter ‘A’ (A1 being the old ‘Great North Road’) and subsidiary roads by four-digit numbers preceded by ‘B’. The first digit of each road number was 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 depending in which zone the road originated . The zones were numbered clockwise from the A1, zone 1 extending to the Dover Road (A2) and zone 2 to the Portsmouth road, zone3, and so on.

During the 1950s the number of cars in England increased far beyond predictions, and the existing road system became congested. ‘Traffic Jams’ became common subjects of conversation and complaint. At this stage the old main roads still ran through the crowded centres of market towns with their mediaeval street-plans, along streets which are mostly pedestrianised today


In 1959 the biggest new-road building phase since the first century AD began with the Preston by-Pass, the first stretch of the M6 and the first stretch of ‘motorway’ built in Britain. The network of ‘motorways’ had been planned for many years but it was only now that finance was available. The first extensive length of motorway was the stretch of the M1 between Rugby and St. Albans, a road which eventually extended from north-west London to Leeds. During the 1960s many new motorways were built at considerable speed, though much controversy since has suggested that the methods of construction were deliberately rushed at the expense of durability, and the following generation of motorway drivers had to become accustomed to frequent disruption for carriageway repairs.

At the end of the twentieth century the roads of England were facing overcrowding from increased motor traffic. As space for completely new roads is exhausted, the proposed solutions indicate further widening of existing roads, and the introduction of tolls to encourage drivers to reduce their use of cars.

I've moved the above ==A brief History of roads in England== for the following reasons. Firstly I'm concerned that it might be copied from somewhere. It's a long entry from an anon user with no real history. Secondly it is titled A brief History of roads in England and yet sometimes talks about roads in the UK and other times about England, it's inconsistent. Thirdly I think that such a long discussion of roads in England is out of context for an article about roads in general and that maybe it should be in an article of it's own. It is also is a bit much for an article to go into such detail about the UK when the article doesn't do so about roads in other countries. Mintguy 01:47 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)

Photo

The photo of the airport road with a jet being towed across is certainly interesting and entertaining, but is it necessary or truly add value? --Dpr 04:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it adds value - Adrian Pingstone 14:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Point of contention?

User:Wbfl keeps deleting this section:

However, even those countries with stricter standards suffer from increasing levels of truck traffic, which is mainly responsible for road damage (see below).
On any road, the load per vehicle axle passing over it is mainly responsible for the amount of wear. Since the effective wear done to the road is roughly proportional to the 4th power of vehicle weight, truck traffic almost always is the exclusive 'real' cause of road damage.
In an example, a hypothetical car weighs half a ton per axle. A truck also travelling on the same road weighs in at 2 tons per axle. The truck causes 256 times the wear of the car (4 times the car's axle load, with a power of 4, yielding 4×4×4×4 = 256), and actual trucks can have even higher axle loads.

This may or may not be true - do we have any sources for this? Do we have any verification that wear is related to the 4th power? If this section is to remain intact, there needs to be some back-up for the claims. On the other hand, the text should remain in place until we decide what to do with it, since it is a fairly large chunk of text, and personally, it sounds reasonable. Graham 06:36, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Most of the discussion so far has taken place at User talk:Wbfl for reasons known only to him. I have located the source for this and amended the article accordingly. Please feel free to weigh in if you have anything to add (here though please!). Graham 05:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I've amended that section. I'm going by on the AASHTO ESAL (= 18 kip equivalent single axle load) factors compiled on page 296 of the textbook "Pavement Analysis and Design" by Yang H. Huang. 2 kip single = 0.00018, 8 kip single = 0.0343, 36 kip tandem = 1.38. Works out to 0.00036 ESALs per typical pasenger vehicle, 2.79 ESALs per typical 18-wheeler for a ratio of 1:7800. ESAL calcualtions are not as simple as raising the axle weight to the fourth power and dividing by 18 kip ^4 . Axle spacings (single, tandem, tridem) have a large effect, and pavement structural capacity and terminal serviceablilty have a smaller, but significant effect. Those numbers I used are for SN=5 and pt = 2.5 - for the purpose of this article I think they can be omitted. Toiyabe 17:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)