Talk:Macadam

New and Improved!

So the basic differences are that Trésaguet said let's use lots of 3" rock and some 1" rock to, oh, round about 10" deep and pack it nicely, and McAdam said, bah lets just use all 2" rock but not use so much rock, only about, oh, say 10" deep. Oh, and don't bother wasting all that time packing it -it's better this way- unless you want to, then go ahead and pack it. Oh wow, look how much "road" we got done! And before lunch too!

By eliminating the "construction" part of road building (packing the rock) his "system" allowed that time to be spent pouring out a long strip of gravel thus falling neatly into the age-old business trap of quantity vs. quality which makes so many "procedures" popular.

On the third hand, I'd rather have a crappy road to my house than a wonderful road to someone else's. Lots of mediocre roads to places I wanna go is much better than one nice one to some place I don't. This was a big improvement on that scale. Any roads that raveled due to high traffic justify repairs and improvements and any that didn't were obviously "good enough".

My point is that this is not a technological advancement -as it is being portrayed- but instead is a philosophical advancement (simplification) that lowered the need for knowledge and skill. Since there are more stupid people than smart people this allowed more roads to be built by lessening the need to prioritize which roads to build first and allows even an idiot to say "uhh, road busted, must fix" dramatically lessening the planning stage of new road construction.

Does any of this matter in regards to this article? I don't know. Perhaps not, but at least somebody read it and commented. J-puppy (talk) 17:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Please note that "gravel" usually refers to round rock while "macadam" requires sharp-edge (broken) rock of a mostly uniform size that will tessellate into a stable, interlocked surface. The tech advancement was to build a road that drained (down) instead of sloughed (drained to the margin). Elrey (talk) 17:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)Elrey

Gravel roads

Modern gravel roads seem pretty similar to the macadam roads of the past. Are they built the same way, or does one have nothing to do with the other? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Floydian (talk • contribs) 02:39, 3 March 2010 The difference is dirt. The road shown in the picture looks to be surfaced with "crusher fines" while true macadam roads are covered with a layer of tessellated (nested and interlocked together by pressure and vibration) homogeneous rock, leaving voids which drain water into the base. The result looks something like this: PXL_20211005_212244099.jpg. They are built on opposing philosophies, drain vs. slough. Elrey (talk) 17:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)Elrey

References

Layers?

If there are two layers of the same size aggregate, then isn't that one layer? I don't feel exactly comfortable with this. I don't know enough about these things and I use Wiki to find out stuff. Help!Longinus876 (talk) 22:32, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Presumably by "layers" someone means "lifts", which are used in construction/engineering to refer to layers as placed. For example, 12 inches of gravel could be placed in two 6-inch lifts. First, six inches of gravel are put down and compacted; then, another six inches are put down and again compacted. This is done because if all the material is laid at once in one "layer" (lift) the deeper material cannot be properly compacted. 76.182.84.206 (talk) 14:18, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

... To clarify how people think about this, let me add: If you examine a cross-section of a road after it's built, you see "layers" of homogeneous material (say, a particular size of gravel, compacted to a particular density). These homogeneous layers are what an engineer initially designs, based on how thick the road needs to be to support traffic. But if you are then concerned with how to build the road, where you have to create such layers out of real materials, you may decide that a "layer" is too thick to create all in one go; you will build the "layer" in multiple lifts. Now, if one's perspective is basically how to build things, then "layer" becomes interchangeable with "lift", whereas to a person with another perspective this sounds counterintuitive. 76.182.84.206 (talk) 14:31, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Exaggeration

The following is clearly an exaggeration: "Stagecoaches traveling the Hagerstown to Boonsboro road in the winter took 5 to 7 hours to cover the 10-mile stretch. "

Stagecoaches use horses which walk faster than humans. Even at a slow pace 7 hours is clearly wrong. People would have been walking past these nags. It was a road, probably a dirt road before paving.

3 miles an hour is a typical human walking pace (2.5 for recreational)

A fat guy walking 10 miles on the Appalation trails takes 4.5 hours. This is a road with horses. 7 hours... come on, really? http://www.seanhenri.com/sean_henri/2007/09/a-ten-mile-hike.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strider22 (talk • contribs) 20:43, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Really!!!! On stage coaches, the horses would need to be changed every ten miles, due to exhaustion. The figure looks very reasonable. Your fat guy only has to move his own weight, how long would it take for him to walk if the surface was two foot of wet sticky mud? Pyrotec (talk) 21:57, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

In winter it rains a lot and any unimproved road becomes a sea of mud. In such cases and conditions man or horse can only walk at a snail's pace, especially if the mud is deep enough to come up to one's knees. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.115.55 (talk) 15:30, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I mean, that seems logical. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 15:40, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Conversion creep

The section on Telford has measurements based on English, converted and rounded to metric, and then converted back again. Anmccaff (talk) 19:15, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

It is also using figues from particular work as though they were universal. Most Telford was layed with smaller pitchers, I'd bet. Anmccaff (talk) 19:25, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

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Off topic section

Why is there a section on other road building techniques in a Macadam article? Seems way off topic and there is no rhyme or reason as to why a specific two are cited. Planing to move them off to their respective articles. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 14:18, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Wrong spelling of the name.

Macadam is incorrect. MacAdam is correct— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.29.29 (talk) 20:55, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

"Macadam" is the name of the building technique; MacAdam the name of the person. Elrey (talk) 17:08, 7 January 2022 (UTC)Elrey

McAdam's influence

It says "He advocated a central road authority with trained professional officials who could be paid a salary that would keep them from corruption. These professionals could give their entire time to these duties and be held responsible for their actions." The article would benefit from stating what this is contrast to - what was the norm at the time, what were the problems with it, and why was this an improvement? Because to readers today the fact that it would be someone's job is assumed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.87.2.38 (talk) 02:04, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Terminology

There are two terms in this article which are not automatically clear to the average oaf-on-the-street (me, for example).

One is a "shallow lift" (in the intro). No use of the word "lift" of which I'm aware fits the context. Can we get a clarification or link here?

The other is a "crowned subgrade" (in the first section, "Predecessors;" Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet​). I think I can figure out what a subgrade is, but what does "crowned" mean here? Again, a link would be helpful.

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 15:46, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Tires/Tyres ?

The word "tire/s" (and "tyre/s") is used throughout--in the early 1800's! Don't you mean "wheels"? 173.90.75.20 (talk) 05:16, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Water-bound macadam

Worth noting that if limestone or gypsum is used with the addition of powdered material and water the material actually bonds