in direct proportion
to the width. If to the cost of making and grading an ordinary roadway
sixty feet wide, we add the capital sum whose interest would be
necessary to keep this width in good repair, we shall have an amount
that would go far toward the construction and maintenance of a road of
the very best quality only thirty feet wide. Furthermore, while it is
impossible to estimate such items exactly, and while the amount thus
saved cannot be controlled for the road-making account, the saving in
the wear and tear of vehicles, and in the team force needed to move
heavy loads, constitutes an important argument in favor of the best
construction. The amount thus saved in the short streets of the village,
where the principal traffic is over rough country roads, would not be
very great, but it would enable the road authorities of the township to
realize the advantage of first-rate roads and the degree to which the
narrowing of the roadway cheapens construction. As a result, there would
soon be an extension of the improvement over the more important highways
into the country; where a well-metalled width of twelve feet would
accommodate nearly the whole traffic, and where the proper application
of a cheap system of under-drainage would make well-metalled roads
extremely cheap to maintain.

In the island of Jersey, there are many excellent roads only six feet
wide. These are provided with frequent little bays or turn-outs to allow
teams to pass each other. Although such extremely narrow roads are not
to be recommended, the difference in comfort and economy of teampower
between these and the average American dirt road is enormously in their
favor. The widest roads in Jersey, leading from a busy town of thirty
thousand inhabitants into a thickly settled farming region where
business and pleasure travel is very active, and where "excursion cars"
carrying thirty or forty persons are constantly passing, are only
twenty-four feet wide; often only of this width between the hedge-rows,
the road itself being an excellent footpath for its whole width. Nowhere
else in the world is the rural charm more perfectly developed than in
Jersey, and no element of its great beauty is so conspicuous and so
constantly satisfactory as its narrow and embowered lanes and roadways.

This, however, by the way, and only as a suggestion, for the sake of
variety. As a rule, we may at least accept much less width than is now
usual for our country and vill