A Radical Change In Public Highways

I advocate au important and far-reaching change in the manner of building country roads - a change whicli when adopted, will lead to the substitution of inanimate power for animal power for the purpose of transportaron on our common roads all over the country. My plan is to extend the street car tracks from our cities out into the circumadjacent territory a distance of thirtyor forty miles, so that all the territory between centers of population sixty or eighty miles apart would be reached. Let these tracks be so made and laid that wagons and carriages propeiled by horses may go upon them as well as cars propelled by electricity or other inanimate power. It is already demonstrated that only one-eighteenth of the power is required to move a vehiclè over a smootli steel track that would be required to move it over a gravel road, or one-eighth that which would be required to move it over the best pavement. When tliis important fact becomes generally knowii to the farmers they will realizo that it is a poor policy to promote the building of macadam roads when in equal outlay would provide a good steel track. When the track is once provided so that cars and carriages propelled by horses can also go upon the same track witli cars propelled by electricity or other inanimate power, the superiority of the inanimate power will be so apparent that horse power will be quickly abandoned. And what we have seen in Cleveland and Columbus and many other cities we will see upon the country roads, namely, a complete substitution of electric power for horse power wherever the rails are laid. Heretofore the use of electric cars has been confined to carrying passengere, and the extensión of the system has depended wholly.aa private enterprise. This must be changed by eularging the use to which the electric cars are put, and by supplementing private enterprise bya more liberal and enlightened public policy. There is no reason why the electric roads should not be carriers of freight as well as passengere, and especially the food products from the field to the market. It is easy to see that as the steani cars supercede the horse power for long hauls, so the electric cars will supplement it for short hauls. It is generally supposed that the cost of building electric roads is greatly in excess of the cost of building macadamized roads. This is all a fiction, and proceed mainly from the fact that to the cost of building the electric road they add the cost of equipping with cars, power and operating force. Take the cost of building a macadam road, and add to that the cost of the horses, wagons, carriages, and drivers required to opérate it, and you will flnd that the macadam road is more costly. Compare the tvvo as shown in the cost of transportation per ton per mile, we flnd that with horses and wagons the cost per ton per mile is twenty-five cents, while with the electric car it is only flve cents per ton per mile. The cost of the steel roadbed is no more than the cost of the stone roadbed, but when it is once laid it contributes much more to cheapen transportation. I have estimated the increased value of agricultural land, resulting froni the decreased cost of transportation over steel rails by inanimate power, at p0 per acre. Observation to conflrm this only waits upon experiment. In conclusión let me submit the following (iiiotations from the report of the Ohio Road Commission, of which I had the honor to be cliairman and which is the pioneer of this new policy : "it being the established policy of the people to aid in cheapening transporta, tion by deepening rivers, harbors, and channels, by building roads and bridgesstreets and viaduets - all by appropriations of public money and by contributing the use of streeets and roads for electric cars - we seeno reason why they might not as logically and more profitably coutribute to the construction of electric railways to be and remain a part of the common roads, as to the paving of these roads to be operated with horses and wagons, if in any locality the people should desire to do so. "We have already reached the maximum power of horses and other animáis for draught, speed and endurance. The only improvement that we could hope to make to lessen the cost of transportation with these animáis would be in improving the roadbed. A comparison of the cost will show that the average expenditure required to macadamize a road or make it hard and durable with any kind of metal is fully equal to the cost required to lay down steel rails, over which not only wagons and carriages propelled by horse but cars propelled by electric power might also go at a greatly reduced cost of transportation. " Hou. John M. Stahl, iif an article in the Illinois number of Good Roads, bas made a conservative estímate of the wagon freight of this country for the year 1892 as 500,000,000 tons. He also estimates that this will be transported every country highways an average distance of eight miles, which would be equivalent to 4,000,000,000 tons one mile. At a cost of 25 cents per ton a mile, which would be required to move it by horse power with ordinary vehicles, it would amount to the enormous sum of Í1, 000,000,000, Tuis. may be gtated as the costof operating wagon roáds. Ñowj if by substituting steel rails and inanimate power there could be a saving of four-flftlis of this ainount - which would be mach less than the proportion indicated by Gilmore's tables - the cost of inoving this tonnage would be only $200,000,000, instead of sf 1,000,000,000, leaviug a gain of .t800,000,000. This lor a period of ten years would leave a net gain of $800,000,000. "We have made great and unexpected improvements in the means of transportation where we have substituted other power for horse power, while we have made but littlc improvement in the oost of transportation where we have adhered to animáis as the motive power. ffo this fact must be added the other important onethat millions and millioas of public money have been expended to aid iii cheapening our rates of transportation ; but if we sbould extend the saine liberal poiicy to the electric car that we have extended to horses and wagons by providing a free Irack for it to go upon, as we have for other vehicles propelled by animáis the rate of transportation would be still further cheápened in the future as it has been in the past, and a lower rate can be so reached thau by any other means. " The economical advantages are so greatly in favor of steel rails and electric power that no objection can be sustained against their introduction unless it rests apon the supposed incortveniences of using this new means in the most commodious manner. In all our great cities and most of our smaller ones, doublé tracks are already laid and are being rapidly extended to the suburbs for considerable distances, from ten to fifteeu miles ; their use at the present time is tiitirely confined to the matter of carrying passengere, but after midnight passenger traffic is over, and from that time until five o'clock in the morniag these tracks are idle and the streets vacant. During that time they could be used to great advantage and with great economy for transporting freight and food products placed upon trail cars, to various markets and other places of distribución in the centers of population : so that the question of introdueing steel rails and electric, power is only a question of extensión. The nucleus of the system already exists, and its use can undoubtedly be extended with great advantage."