GOOD ROADS MOVEMENT, The. The country road is coming into its own in the recent and current egood roads movement? The importance of the rural highways of the nation has been long neglected, in comparison es pecially with the railroad. Canals and water ways— the other great natural means of trans portation — have been likewise neglected. The American attitude toward transportation thus practically reverses the European way of re garding the problems; for in the leading con tinental countries, the highways and waterways are the principal means of transport and are regarded as such. This is due to the conditions of our national development, and the time now seems ripe for a continued interest in the com pletion of a highway system, and a renewed interest in canals, in order to supplement and render adequate to its special function the vast system of railroads that has been created.
In the first beginnings of our westward ex pansion roads occupied an important place, but for a while, in the early decades of the last century, were superseded by canals and water ways, as the principal trunk lines of transpor tation to the opening West. However, the out standing fact that the river systems were sepa rated by important geographic features, together with the need for more direct and rapid transit, made road-building still important. The i railroad coming into practice about 1830 was really but a greatly modified road, and a supplement to the existing waterway system. But from its beginning it came rapidly to supersede all other means of long-distance transport, and has continued its growth and importance in the focus of interest, to the present. The decline of the waterways was very rapid and almost complete, until the very recent awakening of interest in them, as one phase of the conservation of national resources (1908). Roads became a merely local matter—mere feeders for the greatly growing railroad system — the decline of local markets, the cen tralization of industry and commerce in the great centres, and the urgent need for opening of new roads, all combined to give the highways a secondary place in the national transportation problem.
Within the last 75 years, however, the Good Roads Movement has brought the highway to a place of first-rate importance. It constitutes undoubtedly one of — if not the — most im portant chapters in rural progress of the last generation. This is indicated by the fact that in the proceedings of the Country Life Com mission (1908), throughout its tour of investi gation in every part of the United States, the matter of °good roads" was a universal and constant topic of discussion. Within the last 10 years too, State activities in relation to high ways has become one of the largest expenditures of the State governments, ranking next after education, charities and corrections, and at times even superseding these in importance.
The discovery and use of new and distinct sources of State revenues would seem to guar antee the continuance of this activity. More over, the new administrative arrangements under which State aid and control are carried on constitute one of the principal forms of governmental centralization in recent years.
The general strength of the movement mdy be judged from the following current figures: The rural public roads of the United States at the present time (1918) have a total length of 2,456,000 miles (nearly tenfold the railway mileage). Of this immense total, constituting our achievement in road-building as a nation, to date, already some 12 per cent, or 300,000 miles, are °improved° with some sort of hard surfacing. This is practically all the result of the activities associated with the Good Roads Movement since 1890.
Thus viewed the movement seems scarcely begun, and the immensity of the task of im provement appalling. But it must be remem bered that at least half of this enormous mile age of pioneer highways consists of roads that are but little used and quite unnecessary. These may with advantage be closed and hence re quire no improvement. °Relocation° will also in a vast number of cases much reduce the distance, lessen grades and otherwise reduce the problem of good roads for the nation to the limits of a measurable task.