Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/545

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
MODERN CITY ROADWAYS.
529

pense and submit to the annoyance of more frequent renewals for the sake of the quiet, and wood is certainly the least noisy of all known pavements.

Paris had at the close of 1893 more wood than asphalt, the areas of pavements of different kinds being as follows:

Stone 7,541,258 sq. yds., 71.5 per cent.
Wood 886,286 " 8.4 "
Asphalt 402,394 " 3.8 "
Gravel or macadam 1,724,632 " 16.3 "

Berlin also has some wood pavements, but asphalt seems more popular, though by far the greatest area is still of stone pavements.

The most durable wood pavements are those made of the hard woods of Australia, which are especially adapted to this purpose.

Granite Pavement on Roadway of Brooklyn Bridge after Constant Use with Very Heavy Traffic for Sixteen Years.

They are mostly of the eucalyptus family, the red gum, blue gum, black butt, tallow-wood, and mahogany, Mr. George W. Bell, in a pamphlet published in 1895, gives some remarkable statistics as to the durability of these pavements. He cites the case of George Street, in Sydney, which sustains a very heavy traffic, and on which