Is history useful or just fun?

1. Is history useful or just fun? This presentation is about a website that cannot really decide http://www.ruralroads.org

2. What is this site about • Put in place in 2001 and added to sporadically as new ideas came to mind and technology created more possibilities • Moderate amount of visitors but highly rated on search engines • The site will inexorably fall behind as technology outruns my knowledge and funds to exploit it.

4. What are rural roads?

5. What are rural roads? • Rural roads, or low volume roads are networks of simple roads and tracks with earth or gravel surfaces linking to higher level networks • Used mainly by people on foot and bicycles and in Asia specialized vehicles. Few motor vehicles, around ten per day, mainly trucks and pickups • Cheap comparatively to build but expensive and difficult to maintain

6. Six questions: • Are roads needed? • Which roads? • What kind of road? • Which construction technology? • Who will maintain it? I later added a sixth: • What will it cost?

7. Are roads needed?

8. Which roads?

9. What kind of road?

10. Which construction technology?

11. Who will maintain it?

12. What will it cost?

13. From roads to transport to mobility to accessibility

14. From roads to transport to mobility to accessibility • In the 1980’s roads were more or less seen as an end in themselves • Then the emphasis shifted during the ‘90’s to planning core networks • By the year 2000 we moved even further away from roads towards their contribution, if any, to rural mobility • Finally, in some cases, why not forget about building roads and build more clinics and schools instead? • Not a happy prospect for engineers who like building good roads so these ideas are progressing slowly.

15. From roads to transport to mobility to accessibility Following this tendency I added pages on: • Basic access: how to plan networks so that most people will be within a reasonable walking distance of a motorable road • Integrated Rural accessibility planning: where do people want to get to most? What is the most cost-effective mix of expenditure in roads, transport, and services? • Poverty reduction: mobility can reduce isolation but will it reduce poverty? • Corruption (the elephant in the drawing room: we all knew it was there but it was bad manners to mention it) And so on

16. History of road transport

17. History of road transport • Roads are part of a system involving vehicles and what they need to run on; • Intermediate means of transport, being light, help conserve rural roads • Maybe knowing about how vehicles evolved would stimulate IMT development: • Pages were added about the history of road transport, cars, trucks buses (and trams) and motive power. • That is my rationalization: in fact it was for fun

18. History of road construction techniques

19. History of road construction techniques • History had been lurking like a virus in my site from the beginning • Labour-based methods (developed during the ‘70’s) could be seen as a return to the past but with modern management • So why not a page on the history of construction machinery, showing that they were a response to specific social and economic conditions very different to those in poor countries

20. History of road construction techniques • At the end of the 19th century wages in the US were the same as today in the third-world (between 1 and 2 USD per day • But in terms of relative purchasing power, they were about fifteen times higher. • Also labour was scarce as was capital and work had to go ahead as quickly as possible • Hence there were pressures to increase labour productivity

21. History of road construction techniques This is not the case now: • labour is abundant and wages pitifully low, why not use road construction to swell local incomes: • Fuel is economically and environmentally expensive; • Heavy machinery is difficult to use, expensive, and environmentally damaging on small roads in remote areas; • Why then did the idea not really take off?

22. History of road construction techniques • Because we under-estimated the time and effort required to change a technology • The status quo is inert, pinned down by investments in knowledge, careers, and actual machinery (Africa, in particular is or was awash in clapped-out machinery), • Government commitment just was not there • As a result, many labour-based projects were failures or unsustainable. Also very visible due to the I-told-you-so effect

23. History of road construction techniques • In response, technology change has been diluted: • Labour-intensive works are now called labour-based, implying a pragmatic mixture of labour and machines • Lighter cheaper multiple-use machinery is being developed; • Labour-based maintenance methods have become widespread, involving lengthmen, universal from the 18th century in France and the early 19th in the UK • Under the dual pressure of global warming and environmental conservation, labour-based methods must spread.

24. History of road management and financing

25. History of road management and financing • Decentralisation of management and financing is another important issue in rural roads • Usually done to transfer responsibility, often without financial and training support • Difficulty in securing open-ended commitments from donors • Funds tend to leak away both from the top (government transfers) and the bottom (tolls) • Best taxation mechanisms are those with fewer intermediaries

26. History of road management and financing • Decentralization had been tried in the UK over and over again with mixed success • It was tried for hundreds of years in the UK at the parish level but was ineffectual because of the absence of central support and regulation • The UK went heavily into toll roads in the middle of the 18th century but results varied greatly again due to lack of regulation • The tolls were pocketed by the trustees and maintenance was often not done. • Furthermore, the development of efficient steam-powered road vehicles was crushed by punitive tolls, supported by the stakeholders in the stagecoach industry • Then the railway came along and swept them all away in just a few years

27. History of road management and financing • In France, the road system was developed centrally together with a robust construction techniques and rigorous maintenance • They also put in place their prestigious engineering schools while in the UK engineers continued to be trained on the job for another hundred years.

28. The uses of history

29. The uses of history • Working in labour-based works showed me that engineers know little about the history of their profession • Perhaps because of this they are too resistant to change • Why not more emphasis on history in engineering courses, stressing the interdependence of engineering and society

30. The uses of history • Is knowing history really useful? • Do people make better decisions? • Does my site turn off as many people as it interests? To conclude let us agree that knowledge of context, including history improves judgment and incites prudence. nowledge of context becomes indispensable as problems shift from black and white to shades of gray What do you think? Anyway the history of road transport is fun

31. Thank you for your attention