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Book review |
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The Technical Development of Roads in Great Britain. G. West. Ashgate, 2000. £39; 174pp. ISBN 0-7546-1406-9.
Graham West worked at the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) researching on roads for most of his working life. This book is a distillation of his knowledge of road technology and as such is very useful especially for earth scientists contemplating a career in highways, or for enthusiastic amateurs interested in the subject.
At £39 and 125 working pages supplemented by Appendices, Bibliography, Glossary and Index increasing it to 161 pages, it might seem a trifle expensive but it is an invaluable addition to those seeking the technical background of road development. It might perhaps have been better named ‘The Historical Development of Road Design and Construction’ because the first 80 pages describe the historical development of roads from the Romans through the Dark Ages to the Industrial Revolution when road technology came of age. From the earliest times there was an appreciation of why good quality, long lasting roads were essential to the development of civilization but there seem to have been periods in Britain at least when this was forgotten: in Graham's words ‘a fitful progression of improvement followed by neglect’. The accidental discovery of the usefulness of coal tar (and later petroleum bitumen) for sealing roads and the development of the internal combustion engine and pneumatic tyre led to an exponential burgeoning of motor transport from the 1900s onwards.
From page 80 it dwells
primarily with current trends in road engineering
