Streets and Highways in Foreign Countries; Reports from the Consuls of the United States on Streets and Highways in Their Several Districts, in Answer to a Circular from the Department of State (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ... pavements under observation. About 1,394 foet lineal, or 94 per cent, of the entire length of the wood, was that of the improved wood pavement. The remaining 87 feet lineal, or 6 per cent, of the whole, was the ligno-iuineral pavement. It will be seen that altogether 380 horses fell on the improved wood pavement, and 162 on the ligno mineral pavement. Dealing with these figures In the same manner as before, we find that a horse might be expected to travel before it met with an accident 446 miles on the improved wood pavement, and 58 miles on the ligno-mineral pavement. In other words, the improved wood was nearly eight times safer than the ligno-miueral under such conditions of weather and traffic as took place during the 50 days' observations. The ligno-mineral pavement had a gradient of 1 in 49, which was certainly not so good as a considerable length of the other pavement, hut the improved wood had 267 feet in length with gradients varying from 1 in 30 to 1 in 37, which are very much worse for traction than 1 in 49. In addition to this, it had the disadvantage of the bad cross gradients, and it is evident, therefore, that gradient can not account for the large proportion of fulls which occurred on the ligno-mineral pavement. The traffic on both of the pavements was much the same in character, and passed at about the same speed; and as the surfaces of both were in very nearly equally good repair, one was not more disadvantageous placed than the other in these respects. Many omnibuses turn round on the ligno-mineral pavement to take up their station on the eastern side of Gracechnrch sreet, and it was at first imagined that accidents might have been attributable to that cause. On looking into the matter, it was found that the omnibuses were for the most p...