A Plan for Hawaii's Roads

  More Letters From Paradise

      A Plan For Hawaii's Roads

By now you must have heard that our state has the worst roads in the entire nation. Or we came in at number 13, according to another survey. Many of you having traveled in Europe, have been carried along on roads built by the Romans,and were unaware of this fact. These roads are some 2,000 years old and still going strong. But just about here someone will say, "But they didn't have to carry the weight of our trucks and busses."  "Not so," I reply, "they still do. For Roman roads were built very differently than the way we build roads today."

I was thinking about this the other day as our car hit another pot hole. Years ago, I took a class in graduate school, called Roman Building and Construction Methods. I thought a few of you might be interested how the Romans built their roads, and why they are pot hole proof.  In the first place the Romans did not build a road, they built walls. The Latin term is Munre Viam, which means to wall a road.

They began by digging a trench about 4ft. deep, as wide as the road, and the entire length of the road!!! The road would be made wider on curves. I have forgotten the width of the road, but to think the trench ran the entire length of the road. After the ditch was done, walls of stone were built on both sides of the road. Then broken bricks, pottery and tile was tossed into the trench. This debris was set with cement. Next would come layers of stone and sand. All layers of stone were set in cement. When finished, slabs of stone, again set with cement finished the road. The center of the road was higher in the center than its sides to allow water to drain off. And, sometimes curbs and gutters were added. In cities, streets had large stone slabs set at distances apart in order for carts to pass between the stones, and  people could cross over the street without getting their feet wet. The flat stones on the top of many Roman roads were removed by people living in later centuries, to be used for building materials.

In Italy,there were vast deposits of a natural cement called pozza lana, which the Romans mixed with sand,stones, and water,concrete was born. Many Roman buildings were faced with slabs of marble, as the raw concrete was seen as being ugly.
It's funny that I should recall this stuff after all these years. I hope you enjoyed this information.        
         
So then, if we were to "pot hole proof"  our roads, we would have to consider the following : Slavery has been abolished, think of housing thousands of men, how about the number of shovels, and portable toilets  that would be needed. But, on the positive side, we have the stone and sand.

            Aloha
            Grant