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THE ECONOMY OF CONCRETE CULVERTS.The report of the Missouri State Labor Bureau regarding expenditures during the past year for road building and maintenance calls attention to a fact which is coming to be quite generally recognized and that is that no one element in the expense of road maintenance falls as heavily on the taxpayer or shows as little foresight on the part of the people who build them as wooden culverts. The Missouri statistics show that on bridges the cost of maintenance is 17 per cent of the total amount spent, while it tabes 41 per cent of the money for culverts to maintain and replace the ■wooden structures.It is a most encouraging sign of progress to note that the policy of building “tin bridges” and wooden culverts, on the theory that they will do for a few years and there is no need of looking too far ahead or borrowing trouble, is being dispensed with throughout most of the grain belt. The report for one Missouri county is typical:In two years Johnson county built fifty-six steel bridges with concrete backing and wing- walls. In the same time 12G concrete culverts, three and four feet in diameter and eighteen feet long, were constructed. Some are round and others square. Some are over steel forms with 10-foot head walls. The walls are eight inches thick with six-inch floors, reenforced with quarter-inch rods, laid six inches apart. These culverts cost from $90 to $127 each. Sand, Joplin chat and limestone were used.Nor is this new policy confined to Missouri. The Iowa State Highway Commission has furnished plans for $25,000 worth of concrete bridges and j culverts to one of the ninety-nine | ^counties of that state this year, the j ion structures ranging from culverts of j is only a few feet in length to a bridge | sui 119 feet long. In one shipment there | we went twenty-two bridge plans to one j Ru county, each of these plans calling j ful for a concrete culvert or bridge. i mu This new policy takes heed of the future and does not leave a legacy of poor bridges and decrepit culverts to the officials of tomorrow. VvTth aamamstathegeneral realization of the fact that i cogood roads add from 10 to 25 per cent to the value of adjacent farm lands and the far-sighted policy which provides permanent concrete culverts and bridges instead of wooden and metal structures, the outlook for good, scientific road building is better todav thantheusepoitailancrim
Newspaper Details
Des Moines Iowa Homestead
Des Moines, Iowa, US
Thu, Aug 24, 1911
Page 21
Full Page
Clipped by
Wapsi V.
IA, USA 23 Nov 2024
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