TRAFFIC HISTORY
A novelty in 1900, by 1920 increasingly commonplace, and a fact of everyday life by the close of the Second World War, the automobile compelled municipal governments to assume new responsibilities and financial obligations unthought of in earlier days of horse-drawn transportation. City Council passed its first by-law concerning the operation of motor vehicles on city streets in 1912. Within three years proponents of town planning in Hamilton were calling for wider streets to relieve present and future congestion and to meet new traffic requirements. And traffic was not the only problem for with the automobile also came the question of regulating parking. Consequently, Council established a list of streets designated as official parking places.
A Traffic and Street Railway Subcommittee of the Works Committee was formed in 1923 to recommend regulations governing vehicular traffic on streets, to draw up by-laws establishing parking places, hours, and time limits, and to arrange for street and parking signs. Traffic regulations were published in printed form and distributed to drivers. Enforcement was placed in the hands of the Traffic Branch of the Police Department.
For the next 25 years suggestions were made regularly that traffic control was important enough to warrant a separate Committee of Council with duties encompassing the regulation of steam, vehicular, and electric railway traffic, highways, education, law enforcementy and traffic signs and markings. In 1949 Council agreed. A T raffic Committee was set up as well as a department under a co-ordinator/director who was accountable to the Committee and served as its permanent secretary. The co-ordinator prepared detailed studies and information surveys for the Committee concerning traffic arteries, parking regulations, through streets, and other related matters and advised the Committee concerning complaints and applications by delegations. In particular, he worked in concert with the Police Department and was expected to possess detailed knowledge concerning the type, location, and frequency of motor vehicle accidents in the city. In 1960 his duties were amended by By-law 9353 to include the placement, erection, and maintenance of traffic control devices. The creation of the Traffic Committee itself was acknowledgement of the difficulties which the growing popularity of the automobile posed. Between 1919 and 1949 the number of registered, non-commercial passenger vehicles in Hamilton had risen from 4,948 to 32, 929; from 1949 to 1968 their number would triple to 96, 706. There was one automobile to every 22 residents in 1919, one to every three in 1969. Indeed, a 1945 "Report of Existing Conditions", commissioned by the Planning Committee, concluded that east-west congestion and other traffic problems were major dilemmas facing the city.
Local government recognized these difficulties. It undertook comprehensive traffic surveys, sought to provide better entrances to the city, and emphasized the creation in the Traffic Department of a staff of trained engineering personnel capable of studying and advising on traffic problems. City Council minutes began to include increasingly lengthy and comprehensive by-laws to regulate traffic. These generally included general traffic directions, information on meters, parking, and stopping, penalties for infractions, and lists of through highways, one-way streets, bus stops and routes, and parking areas. In 1956 a Traffic and Transportation Plan known as the "One-Way Street Plan" was adopted, and in the late 1960s Council implemented the Hamilton Area Transportation Study which, with provincial funding, examined traffic patterns, movements, and improved access to the city' Appropriations for the Traffic Department equalled $1,101,080 in 1973.
Adequate parking facilities also posed a challenge for city government. In 1951 Mayor Lloyd Jackson commented in his inaugural address that in the past Hamilton had made little headway in providing off-street parking. He suggested that the city purchase depreciated, low income properties particularly in the core of the city and, until they were needed for other projects, lease them for parking. In 1957 under the Ontario Municipal Act, the city was empowered to establish a Parking Authority with the ability to expropriate lands for vehicular parking. The Hamilton Parking Authority, composed of three members sitting for three-year terms, was responsible for the construction, maintenance, operation, control, and management of municipal lands, buildings, or structures where vehicles were parked. It could pass by-laws and fix charges and rates for the use of its facilities. Stipulations were made that the Authority be self-sustaining and that its personnel receive the same benefits as other civic employees
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By Mary Bellis
The first indications of constructed roads date from about 4000 BC and consist of stone paved streets at Ur in modern-day Iraq and timber roads preserved in a swamp in Glastonbury, England.
Late 1800s Road Builders
The road builders of the late 1800s depended solely on stone, gravel and sand for construction. Water would be used as a binder to give some unity to the road surface.
John Metcalfe, a Scot born in 1717, built about 180 miles of roads in Yorkshire, England (even though he was blind). His well drained roads were built with three layers: large stones; excavated road material; and a layer of gravel.
Modern tarred roads were the result of the work of two Scottish engineers, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam. Telford designed the system of raising the foundation of the road in the center to act as a drain for water. Thomas Telford (born 1757) improved the method of building roads with broken stones by analyzing stone thickness, road traffic, road alignment and gradient slopes. Eventually his design became the norm for all roads everywhere. John Loudon McAdam (born 1756) designed roads using broken stones laid in symmetrical, tight patterns and covered with small stones to create a hard surface. McAdam's design, called "macadam roads," provided the greatest advancement in road construction.
Asphalt Roads
Today, 96% of all paved roads and streets in the U.S. - almost two million miles - are surfaced with asphalt. Almost all paving asphalt used today is obtained by processing crude oils. After everything of value is removed, the leftovers are made into asphalt cement for pavement. Man-made asphalt consists of compounds of hydrogen and carbon with minor proportions of nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen. Natural forming asphalt, or brea, also contains mineral deposits.
The first road use of asphalt occurred in 1824, when asphalt blocks were placed on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Modern road asphalt was the work of Belgian immigrant Edward de Smedt at Columbia University in New York City. By 1872, De Smedt had engineered a modern, "well-graded," maximum-density asphalt. The first uses of this road asphalt were in Battery Park and on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1872 and on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., in 1877.