Roads Planning

Roads Planning

Roads are skeleton of any town plan , or ,to vary the simile ,the arteries of the organisms through which the life blood of communication flows. The planner must necessary let the road engineer have the last word regarding road material , gradient camber ,super elevation, radii of horizontal and vertical curves , etc through he should be well aware of the technical factors governing them , and he should regard the traffic engineer or traffic planer as an indispensable colleague . This is not to imply that sheer traffic efficiency should be determinant in preparing the town plan ,for numerous other factors may well be of equal or greater importance , but certainly a Town Plan which dose not ensure the efficient flow of traffic is little more useful than an aircraft which will not fly.

Roads are of greater antiquity . They were original pedestrian track along which , before the invention of the wheel ,loads might be dragged on rough sledges ; they became , as human civilization progressed , routes along which animals were driven , led or ridden and horse drawn , later , mechanically propelled vehicle traveled.

Always ,roads have had a dual function : as traffic routes and as means of access to dwellings and other buildings ; it is only since the vast growth of transport which has arisen from the invention of the internal combustion that these have been seriously in conflict with each other . Today this conflict is very grave , and leads to terrible injury and loss of life and to grossly wasteful delay in the transport of worker and goods.

A casual inspection of road traffic is apt to give the impression of a vast number of vehicle moving about the country in random fusion , but this impression is false . It is remarkable that the average length of a vehicle journey in this country is only six miles. Traffic forms definite patterns which vary form day to day and at different times during each day .Nearly all journeys have a purpose , so that careful observation of existing traffic part tens and analysis of the number of people likely to visit taffic-attacting uses to be established in the future road requirements.

In early of the morning there are usually very few vehicles on the roads –in the U.S.A , this traffic is termed as the “O.W.L” . Around 6a.m., however, early manual workers appear on the scene , together with vehicles delivering ...

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...rists and peril to the springs and back axles of vehicles. At first sight this idea may seem eccentric but it is rooted in common sense. It may be impracticable to limit the speed, and hence the danger to pedestrians, of motor vehicles by appeals to law or common sense ; physical limitations ,however, are less easily ignored. Speed within a residential area, has to be sacrificed to safety; the motorist has moved out of the road system proper and is simply threading his way to a destination.

Experiments on these lines have already been made by making humps or gutters across private residential roads to limit speed. It would be easy to design roads deliberately with similar configuration but in a way which would keep the road in a stable condition instead of subject progressive deterioration. Very pleasant visual effects could be worked into the designs.

A different method is the use of ‘Ripple bars. These are humps running across a carriageway which can be to added existing roads. They are placed 60 to 70 yards apart and rely for their effect upon the discomfort they produce to the occupants of vehicles which cross them at more than 15 m.p.h. they are used in various places.