Why I love roads

When was the last time you stopped and thought to yourself, "wow, that is a really fantastic road!"

There a plenty of things in the modern world we could do without, but a road?

They have been a crucial part of life for thousands of years, although there has been some debate as to what is the oldest known road in the world.

Some scholars believe that the first pathway, the grandfather of the modern stretch of concrete, dates back to 10,000 BC.

The earliest examples of a road go back nearly 4,000 years, with the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur (near Nasiriyah in modern day Iraq) containing the first stone paved road according to historians.

However in 2009, in Plumstead, London, a 6,000 year-old track was discovered which is now acknowledged to be the oldest 'archaeological' road.

The invention of wheels coincided with the need for something other than a dirt track, with Corduroy roads (made by placing logs) built in England back in 3300 BC, while the maiden brick paved streets were used through India 300 years later.

The first highway is believed to be the 'Royal Road' which is part of the famous Silk Road (which is not a road, it refers to both the land and sea routes connecting Asia with Africa, the Middle East and Europe).

"Roads were made for journeys, not destinations."

Confucius (Chinese Philosopher, 551 BC – 479 BC)

Persian King Darius the Great originally built this 'road' to ensure that communication lines throughout his vast empire were as instant as humanly possible.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote "Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

A phrase adopted by none other than the United States Postal Service.

One of the first intercontinental networks of roads traces back to approximately 300 BC, when the Roman Republic built a monstrous (by ancient standards) series of straight roads throughout Europe and North Africa.

It was one of the earlier cases of transport routes being designed where commerce was not the central goal, but rather the support of military campaigns.

Nearly 30 roads covering an astonishing 80,000 km made up this network of stone roads, many of which still exist today (the final days of the Roman Empire saw nearly 115 provinces connected by a breathtaking 400,000 km of roads).

“I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.” 

Alfred de Musset-Pathay (French poet, 1810 - 1857) 

In the eight century the Abbasid Caliphate (the third to succeed the prophet Muhammad), founded Baghdad in 762 AD and roads were built throughout the vast Middle Eastern Kingdoms.

The Chinese earlier in history had developed a road system that was considered the equal of the Romans, beginning under Emperor Qin Shi Huang, which eventually (by roughly 700 AD) grew to a network of nearly 40,000 km.

Charlemagne, the first 'European Emperor' to rule since the fall of the Western Roman Empire some three centuries earlier, began to improve roads after many networks had fallen into disrepair throughout the Dark Ages; the Moors built an extensive series of roads throughout Spain while the Vikings oversaw construction of the Varangian Road, connecting the Baltic and Middle East.

Centuries later in Britain policy married with the maintenance of road networks, with the notorious Highways Act of 1555 established.

No longer was maintaining the road the government's task, but it fell under the province of the local parishes, which quickly resulted in the condition of roads across the country falling into various states of disrepair.

While local roads were able to be maintained by parishioners this arrangement proved unsuitable as major highways were becoming increasingly used by traders with heavy wagons, and when a parliamentary bill in 1621 proposed to make travelers pay their own way it was knocked back.

In London, the lack of road repair was causing major issues so the first 'toll roads' were created with the establishment of turnpike trusts in 1706.

Like the modern collection of tolls (a necessary evil due to the massive cost of building and maintaining road networks) turnpikes were not popular and resulted in mass protests, headlined by the Rebecca Riots.

During this time though roads were beginning to convalesce, and one of the first individuals to pioneer road design during the Industrial Revolution was John Metcalf, who began construction of nearly 300 km of turnpike road from 1765.

It was 'Blind Jack of Knaresborough' who established what is widely considered to be the first series of toll roads, and due to the sheer distance (at the time) built, some 180 miles throughout the North of England, Metcalf decided that changes would be needed to the traditional methods of road building.

Not only did he shun the tried and true method of building a road - which was building over anything and everything, hills and mountains included - he decided that the fundamental foundations would need to be altered.

"If you were to drive to the Moon (a distance of nearly 400,000 km from Earth), it would take approximately 6 months (driving at approximately 60 mph). The United States and India are in a perpetual race as the 'Kings of the Road', boasting nearly 7,000,000 km of road networks."

Not only did he decide on practical routes (using a Surveyor's Wheel, a statue of Metcalf with this device is in the Market Place of Knaresborough, North Yorkshire), but modern road draining techniques, convex surfacing and building over swamps or wetlands were part of Blind Jack's legacy.

Other avant-garde road builders were Pierre-Marie-Jerome Tresaguet (who in 1775 wrote about laying larger rocks on top of smaller gravel to protect the ground underneath), Thomas Telford (the 'Colossus of the Roads' re-engineered Holyhead Road, now the A5 in the United Kingdom) and Scotsman John Loudon McAdam - who developed the first versions of stone and soil aggregation, now know as macadam construction.

The United States, now with over 6.8 million km of networks (the most on the Planet) built their first macadam road in 1823, named the 'Boonsborough Turnpike Road' and went one step further than John Loudon McAdam, using cast iron rollers to compact the road, instead of the ensuing traffic.

However at this stage roads were fast losing their status as the premier transportation route, with international trade growing at an astronomical rate.

Steamships and railroads were transforming the way people, and goods, were transported, and America, already on its way to becoming the world's newest superpower, saw the need for major change with the Good Roads movement beginning in the late 1870s.

Roy Stone, who had fought in the American Civil and Spanish-American War, was one of the figure heads behind the establishment of The Office of Road Inquiry within the Department of Agriculture.

He was given a massive (at the time) budget of $10,000 to begin new road development.

But on December 15, 1861, Charles Edgar Duryea was born in Canton, Illinois, followed a few years after by his brother James Frank (born October 8, 1869 in Washburn).

These two brothers would begin a chain of events that would change how roads were viewed for ever.

In 1893 in Springfield the bicycle mechanics built the first gasoline powered 'motor wagon', but despite the immense fanfare, it was expensive for the time, although it started the process which would culminate with Henry Ford releasing the Model-T on October 1, 1908.

Massive levels of investment were required to build more roads as the number of cars increased exponentially over the next 100 years (a rate that continues to increase today), which led to global implementations of more toll roads.

Roads are incredibly expensive, with some estimates suggesting a single mile costs at least a quarter of a million dollars, and Italy in 1924 introduced motorway tolls to help fund major infrastructure such as tunnels and bridges, with the Greeks following suit in 1927.

"Over 1 million people are killed on roads every year globally. Correctly used seat belts reduce the chance of death by over 50%, while it is estimated by the World Health Organisation that a 1 km/h speed reduction reduces chance of an accident by 2%"

Many roads were still constructed under government funding, most famously the German Bundesautobahn, conceived by the Weimar Republic in the mid-1920s as a massive infrastructure project that would rejuvenate an economy that had been destroyed after the First World War and the ensuing Treaty of Versailles.

Days after the Nazi Party assumed power in 1933, new Chancellor Adolf Hitler eagerly poured resources into the construction of the Autobahn, and three years later full employment in Germany was reached, thanks to over 400,000 jobs in construction directly related to what was arguably the world's premier motorway project at the time.

It attracted international attention, being the first high speed road network ever built.

The successful 432 km/h world record set by Rudolf Caracciola, one of the highest speed efforts ever attempted on a public motorway, only increased the fanfare, although work ceased in 1941 due to the Second World War.

By this time over 3,819 km of the Autobahn had been constructed.

The Autobahn was not built, as some historians suggest, to help the Nazis transport troops around Europe, although sections of the motorway were used by the Luftwaffe during the Planet's biggest ever conflict as temporary runways.

After the war vast amounts of money were poured into road building projects, with the Caracas-La Guaira highway in Venezuela completed in 1953 at the cost of over $3.5 million dollars per km, a feat achieved thanks to the vast oil resources of the country.

The finished project was considered equal to the Panama Canal in the Americas as a feat of engineering.

In 1956 one of the largest public works projects in history was approved after US President Dwight D Eisenhower signed the bill into law on June 29, and over $25 billion was allocated for construction of nearly 70,000 km of the Interstate Highway System was approved.

Nearly half a trillion (by 2016 dollars) has been spent on what is unofficially considered to be America's 'Sixth Freedom'.

Australia in 1974 introduced the National Roads Act, and eventually the National Highway network would become part of "Highway 1" which is now the longest national road in the world, with over 1 million people travelling the 14,500 km stretch of road every day.

Now roads form an integral and truly massive part of the world, with nine countries boasting over a million km of roads (US, India, China, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Canada, France and Thailand) while Australia wields the greatest distance of road per capita on Earth, with nearly 900,000 km of concrete laid.

Now, the amount of money being poured into roads is breathtaking, headlined by the estimated $10 trillion dollar's China is pouring into the Belt and Road Initiative, with 68 countries signing up to the new 'Chinese Silk Road' in what is arguably President Xi Jinping's most ambitious project ever.

Announced in 2013, it will expand the world's biggest economies trade influence, although by km it isn't the most expensive road project, that honour could belong to New Zealand, who have proposed an East West Link in Auckland to cater for the estimated extra million people that will live in the countries biggest city by 2050.

Reports suggest the short arterial road will cost $327 million dollars per km, which will likely be recouped by the government via toll roads, something that Sydney residents know plenty about.

By 2023 it is estimated that Australia's largest residential area will have more toll roads than any other city in the world, with locals already spending approximately $8000 a year to travel through networks designed to bypass city traffic.

Something London residents know plenty about, paying a central congestion fee since 2003, as one of the world's biggest cities attempts to reduce road traffic - something other cities around the world including Brisbane are considering implementing.

Gothenburg, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm all have congestion charges along with smaller town centres including Durham, Valletta and Znojmo - although like tolls they are not popular with the public, New York had considered such a system but it was scrapped.

However numbers prove that London, perhaps the highest profile city to introduce congestion charges, has seen traffic on their roads decrease.

Yet challenges for roads and the cost of maintaining them will only evolve over time, with many believing that new technology, such as the electric car, could be a major issue in the years to come.

But that is a story for another day...