Paving Our Ways: A History of the World’s Roads and Pavements

315 Pages·2020·21.956 MB·English

by  Maxwell Lay, John Metcalf, Kieran Sharp

Paving Our Ways

Paving Our Ways
A History of the World’s Roads and
Pavements
Maxwell Lay
John Metcalf
Kieran Sharp
First edition published 2021
by CRC Press
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© 2021 Maxwell Lay, John Metcalf, Kieran Sharp
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The right of Maxwell Lay, John Metcalf, and Kieran Sharp to be identified as authors of this work
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lay, M. G. (Maxwell G.), author. | Metcalf, J. B., author. | Sharp,
K. G. (Kieran G.), author.
Title: Paving our ways : a history of the world’s roads and pavements / Max Lay,
John Metcalf, Kieran Sharp.
Description: First edition. | Boca Raton : CRC Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020031512 (print) | LCCN 2020031513 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367520786 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367520809 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003056300 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000228465 (epub) |
ISBN 9781000228403 (mobi) | ISBN 9781000228342 (adobe pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Pavements—History. | Roads—History.
Classification: LCC TE250 .L39 2021 (print) | LCC TE250 (ebook) |
DDC 625.809—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031512
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031513
ISBN: 978-0-367-52080-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-52078-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05630-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Advice from Leunig1
and
A pavement charter
First let the wayes be regularly brought
To artificial form, and truly wrought;
So that we can suppose them firmly mended,
And in all parts the work well ended,
That not a stone’s amiss; but all compleat
All lying smooth, round firm, and wondrous neat.
Thomas Mace, Trinity College, Cambridge 16752

Contents
Preface: What is a road pavement? ix
Authors xiii
1 How pavements are affected by traffic and weather 1
2 Early pavements in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete and Greece 7
3 Making pavements using local materials and simple
equipment 13
4 The essential paving properties of soil, sand and stones 27
5 Paving ways through swamps and bogs 37
6 Roman pavements – a major advance in pavement
quality and extent 43
7 Pavement management processes from medieval Europe 51
8 Trésaguet and Telford lead a pavement renaissance in
France and England 59
9 McAdam invents a major new pavement using broken stones 67
10 Using masonry methods to produce pavements for
heavy traffic 87
vii
viii Contents
11 The essential paving properties of bitumen, asphalt and
cement 99
12 Three unique pavement engineers – Metcalf, McAdam
and Mountain 105
13 The first asphalt pavements, produced in 19th-century
France and England 113
14 A new form of pavement using thin, sprayed bituminous
surfacings 131
15 Asphalt paving produced to carry 20th-century truck traffic 137
16 The design of asphalt pavements – a predominantly
American initiative 151
17 The 20th-century development of concrete pavements 165
18 Chemical and physical means of modifying local
materials for paving 175
19 Devices and methods for measuring and evaluating
pavement performance 181
20 Full-scale testing of pavements to validate designs using
local materials 207
21 Possible future pavements, with an emphasis on recycling 229
22 How pavements could be funded and operated in future
years 235
Timeline 239
Bibliography 253
End Notes 269
Index 291
Preface: What is a road pavement?
Travel has always played an important role in the functioning of the human
species. After our ancestors descended from the trees, the character of that
role changed as human existence now relied on journeys across the ground.
Frequent essential journeys to one particular location, such as a waterhole,
led to the incidental creation of tracks and paths. Some paths later became
wide enough to be called roads and some of these paths and roads came to
have surfaces applied to them. The purpose of these surfaces – now called
pavements – was to make travel easier or safer or more impressive. Our
roads were the silver threads that tied our communities together over both
distance and time, and the pavements were the fabric that turned those
threads into a useful reality.
This all-pervading role of pavements might be reason enough to write a
book about their world history over the four millennia or so of their exis-
tence, particularly as no previous history has been published. However,
another potent reason is that the construction and subsequent use of pave-
ments reflect the real world in which they existed, presenting their strengths,
foibles and weaknesses in an interesting new light. This history will also
demonstrate the shaky and stumbling nature of human progress over the
millennia.
The book is written for interested laypeople and does not require any
prior knowledge of pavement technology or of road engineering. To assist
such a readership, two chapters provide optional detours into some of the
more arcane mysteries that surround paving materials.
Ground travel was once an occasion in itself. Today, travel by road is
often considered as a peripheral event and may only have subconscious
impacts on the traveller. Most of us recognise the distance that we must
travel as a necessary and unavoidable dimension but, because it is much
longer than human dimensions, we often measure our journeys in units of
time rather than in kilometres and we rarely realise that the pavements we
use also have dimensions of width and thickness and surface texture.
Pavements are sufficiently wide to accommodate vehicles such as cars
and trucks. Their total width is usually thought of in terms of the number
of lanes, rather than metres. The number of vehicles expected to use the
ix