Historic Newspaper Articles
This newspaper article dated April 6, 1927 is from the Maitland News' published weekly by the Maitland News Company, Ana B. Treat, Editor and Business Manager
IS 100 FOOT RIGHT-OF -WAY NEEDED?
The question is frequently asked, why do we need 100 foot right-of-way for the state road, isn't such and such a width enough? Will we ever need 100 feet, and what will we need it for? Now these questions are natural because in these days of rapid advance and transportation facilities only an expert can keep up with the changes and even then by the time the experts work out a perfect way of handing the traffic, conditions have so changed that their plans out of date and they have to begin all over again. How much more difficult is it then for the average citizen to grasp the needs of the traveling public now, not to speak of ten or twenty years hence! State roads are not built for today's traffic alone. They are built to last ten, twenty, and even thirty years under the estimated wear of an estimated average usage. Tax payers balk at paying for a road that is worn out or out-of-date long before the bonds are paid for. That is why traffic engineers try to build highways that will stand up not only under the hardest usage that they can foresee now but that they try also to design highways that will care for the increasing demands made upon them every year. They must design them so that with little added cost and inconvenience to citizens, property owners and taxpayers pavements maybe widened and adapted to change conditions.
It is well known that it is expensive and sometimes well nigh impossible to widen an existing right-of-way, especially in a highly developed section of a county or city where the traffic demands are the highest and where changes are the most needed. Early road builders never realize that such traffic as we have now would ever be possible. Today, automobile travel, both freight and passenger, must have smooth, straight, hard pavements; and they must have them wide not only to accommodate the immense volume of traffic but to permit different speeds and different kinds of vehicles to travel at the same time with safety. In California some of the state highways are paved 100 feet wide and they are none too wide for the traffic over them. The day is even now in sight when the highway between Sanford and Orlando will carry such a volume of travel that our present roads will be unsafe and entirely inadequate for economical transportation.
Imagine if you will, the traffic ten years from now. All statistics point to an immense population increase in Florida. Roads, to serve adequately, must provide for pedestrians; slow moving, or comparatively slow moving truck, vans and buses; they must provide for through passenger cars and local pleasure and business cars. The time is already passed |
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