Preparation for Highway Engineering (CE414F)

Brief History of Highway

Highways and roads, traveled way on which people, animals, or wheeled vehicles move. In modern
usage the term road describes a rural, lesser traveled way, while the word street denotes an urban
roadway. Highway refers to a major rural traveled way; more recently it has been used for a road, in
either a rural or urban area, where points of entrance and exit for traffic are limited and controlled.

Roads of antiquity - Ancient roads of the Mediterranean and Middle East

The first roads were paths made by animals and later adapted by humans. The earliest records of such
paths have been found around some springs near Jericho and date from about 6000 BC. 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. During the Bronze
Age, the availability of metal tools made the construction of stone paving more feasible; at the same
time, demand for paved roads rose with the use of wheeled vehicles, which were well established by
2000 BC.

Cretan Stone Roads

At about this time the Minoans on the island of Crete built a 30-mile (50-kilometre) road from Gortyna
on the south coast over the mountains at an elevation of about 4,300 feet (1,300 metres) to Knossos on
the north coast. Constructed of layers of stone, the roadway took account of the necessity of drainage
by a crown throughout its length and even gutters along certain sections. The pavement, which was
about 12 feet (360 centimetres) wide, consisted of sandstone bound by a clay-gypsum mortar. The
surface of the central portion consisted of two rows of basalt slabs 2 inches (50 millimetres) thick. The
centre of the roadway seems to have been used for foot traffic and the edges for animals and carts. It is
the oldest existing paved road.
Roads of Persia and Babylon
The earliest long-distance road was a 1,500-mile
route between the Persian Gulf and the
Mediterranean Sea. It came into some use
about 3500 BC, but it was operated in an
organized way only from about 1200 BC by the
Assyrians, who used it to join Susa, near the
Persian Gulf, to the Mediterranean ports of
Smyrna (İzmir) and Ephesus.
Egypt
Herodotus credits the Egyptians with building
their first roads to provide a solid track upon
which to haul the immense limestone blocks
used in the pyramids, and archaeological
evidence indicates that such road building took
place southwest of Cairo between 2600 and
2200 BC.
Ancient roads of Europe
The Amber Routes
During the 2nd millennium BC, trade ways
developed in Europe. They were constructed by
laying two or three strings of logs in the
direction of the road on a bed of branches and
boughs up to 20 feet (6 metres) wide. This layer
was then covered with a layer of transverse logs
9 to 12 feet in length laid side by side. In the
best log roads, every fifth or sixth log was
fastened to the underlying subsoil with pegs.
There is evidence that the older log roads were
built prior to 1500 BC. They were maintained in
a level state by being covered with sand and
gravel or sod. In addition, the Romans used side
ditches to reduce the moisture content and
increase the carrying capacity.
In Babylon about 615 BC the Chaldeans connected
the city’s temples to the royal palaces with the
Processional Way, a major road in which burned
bricks and carefully shaped stones were laid in
bituminous mortar.
Greece
The early Greeks depended primarily on sea travel.
There is evidence of the building of special roads for
religious purposes and transport about 800 BC, but
there is little evidence of substantial road building for
travel andProcessional Way
transport prior tointhe
Babylon
Roman system. The
Greeks did build a few ceremonials, or “sacred,”
roads, paved with shaped stone and containing wheel
ruts about 55 inches (140 centimeters) apart.
The Roman roads
The Romans began their road-making task in
334 BC and by the peak of the empire had built
nearly 53,000 miles of road connecting their
capital with the frontiers of their far-flung
empire. Twenty-nine great military roads, the
viae militares, radiated from Rome. The most
famous of these was the Appian Way.
The typical Roman road was bold in conception
and construction. The foundation was then
raised about three feet above ground level,
employing material taken from the drains and
from the adjacent cleared ground.
As the importance of the road increased, this embankment was progressively covered with a light
bedding of sand or mortar on which four main courses were constructed: (1) the statumen layer 10 to
24 inches (250 to 600 millimetres) thick, composed of stones at least 2 inches in size, (2) the rudus, a 9-
inch-thick layer of concrete made from stones under 2 inches in size, (3) the nucleus layer, about 12
inches thick, using concrete made from small gravel and coarse sand, and, for very important roads, (4)
the summum dorsum, a wearing surface of large stone slabs at least 6 inches deep. The total thickness
thus varied from 3 to 6 feet. The width of the Appian Way in its ultimate development was 35 feet. The
two-way, heavily crowned central carriageway was 15 feet wide. On each side it was flanked by curbs 2
feet wide and 18 inches high and paralleled by one-way side lanes 7 feet wide. This massive Roman road
section, adopted about 300 BC, set the standard of practice for the next 2,000 years.

Ancient Roman Road in Cross Section

Ancient roads of South and East Asia

India

Evidence from archaeological and historical sources indicates that by AD 75 several methods of road
construction were known in India. These included the brick pavement, the stone slab pavement, a kind
of concrete as a foundation course or as an actual road surface, and the principles of grouting (filling
crevices) with gypsum, lime, or bituminous mortar. Street paving seems to have been common in the
towns in India at the beginning of the Common Era, and the principles of drainage were well known.

China’s Imperial Highway

China had a road system that paralleled the Persian Royal Road and the Roman road network in time
and purpose. Its major development began under Emperor Shihuangdi about 220 BC. Many of the roads
were wide, surfaced with stone, and lined with trees; steep mountains were traversed by stone-paved
stairways with broad treads and low steps. By AD 700 the network had grown to some 25,000 miles
(about 40,000 kilometers). Traces of a key route near Xi’an are still visible.
The Silk Road

The trade route from China to Asia Minor and India, known as the Silk Road, had been in existence for
1,400 years at the time of Marco Polo’s travels (c. AD 1270–90). It came into partial existence about 300
BC, when it was used to bring jade from Khotan (modern Hotan, China) to China. By 200 BC it was linked
to the West, and by 100 BC it was carrying active trade between the two civilizations.

The Middle Ages

Europe and Asia

At the zenith of the Roman Empire, overland trade joined the cultures of Europe, North Africa, Asia
Minor, China, and India. But the system of road transport was dependent on the Roman, Chinese, and
Mauryan empires, and, as these great empires declined in the early Christian era, the trade routes
became routes of invasion. Except in the Byzantine Empire, road networks fell into centuries of
disrepair. Transport relied on pack trains, which could negotiate the badly maintained roads and sufficed
to carry the reduced stream of commerce.

The first signs of a road revival came during the reign of Charlemagne late in the 8th century. In the 9th
century the Moors established an extensive street network in Córdoba, Spain. The Vikings operated the
Varangian Road, a major trade route linking the Baltic and the Middle East via Russia. Further road
revival was aided first by the need to service the regular round of trade fairs and then, in the 11th
century, by a centralization of power and an increase in religious fervor.

The birth of the Modern Road

The master road builders

Trésaguet

In France, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet, an engineer from an engineering family, became in 1764

engineer of bridges and roads at Limoges and in 1775 inspector general of roads and bridges for France.
In that year he developed an entirely new type of relatively light road surface, based on the theory that
the underlying natural formation, rather than the pavement, should support the load. His standard cross
section (shown in the figure, top) was 18 feet wide and consisted of an eight-inch-thick course of
uniform foundation stones laid edgewise on the natural formation and covered by a two-inch layer of
walnut-sized broken stone. This second layer was topped with a one-inch layer of smaller gravel or
broken stone. In order to maintain surface levels, Trésaguet’s pavement was placed in an excavated
trench—a technique that made drainage a difficult problem.

Telford

Thomas Telford, born of poor parents in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1757, was apprenticed to a stone
mason. Intelligent and ambitious, Telford progressed to designing bridges and building roads. He placed
great emphasis on two features: (1) maintaining a level roadway with a maximum gradient of 1 in 30
and (2) building a stone surface capable of carrying the heaviest anticipated loads. His roadways were 18
feet wide and built in three courses: (1) a lower layer, seven inches thick, consisting of good-quality
foundation stone carefully placed by hand (this was known as the Telford base), (2) a middle layer, also
seven inches thick, consisting of broken stone of two-inch maximum size, and (3) a top layer of gravel or
broken stone up to one inch thick. (See figure, middle.)

McAdam

The greatest advance came from John Loudon McAdam, born in 1756 at Ayr in Scotland. McAdam began
his road-building career in 1787 but reached major heights after 1804, when he was appointed general
surveyor for Bristol, then the most important port city in England. The roads leading to Bristol were in
poor condition, and in 1816 McAdam took control of the Bristol Turnpike. There he showed that traffic
could be supported by a relatively thin layer of small, single-sized, angular pieces of broken stone placed
and compacted on a well-drained natural formation and covered by an impermeable surface of smaller
stones. He had no use for the masonry constructions of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Cross sections of three 18th-century European roads, as designed by (top) Pierre Trésaguet, (middle)
Thomas Telford, and (bottom) John McAdam.

Roads in the age of the automobile

Beginning in the 1840s, the rapid development of railroads brought the construction of lightweight
Trésaguet-McAdam roads to a virtual halt. For the next 60 years, road improvements were essentially
confined to city streets or to feeder roads to railheads. Other rural roads became impassable in wet
weather.
National and international highway systems

By the early 1920s this general plan remained essentially the same except that a gradual change in class
and responsibility had taken place. At that time the road system was divided into four classes: (1)
national highways, improved and maintained by the national government, (2) regional highways,
improved and maintained by the department under a road service bureau appointed by the Department
Commission, (3) main local roads, connecting smaller cities and villages, built and maintained from funds
of the communes supplemented by grants from the department, and (4) township roads, built and
maintained by the communities alone.

The United Kingdom

While the British recognized the necessity for national support of highways and a national system as
early as 1878, it was the Ministry of Transport Act of 1919 that first classified the roadway system into
23,230 miles of Class I roads and 14,737 miles of Class II roads. Fifty percent of the cost of Class I roads
and 25 percent of the cost of Class II roads were to be borne by the national government. In the mid-
1930s the need for a national through-traffic system was recognized, and the Trunk Roads Act of 1939,
followed by the Trunk Roads Act of 1944, created a system of roadways for through traffic. The Special
Roads Act of 1949 authorized existing or new roads to be classified as “motorways” that could be
reserved for special classes of traffic. The Highways Act of 1959 swept away all previous highway
legislation in England and Wales and replaced it with a comprehensive set of new laws.

The United States and Canada

The mammoth U.S. Interstate Highway System (formally, the National System of Interstate and Defense
Highways) developed in response to strong public pressures in the 1950s for a better road system. These
pressures culminated in the establishment by President Dwight Eisenhower of the Clay Committee in
1954. Following this committee’s recommendations, the Federal Aid Highway Act and the Highway
Revenue Act of 1956 provided funding for an accelerated program of construction. A federal gasoline tax
was established, the funds from which, with other highway-user payments, were placed in a Highway
Trust Fund. The federal-state ratio for funding construction of the Interstate System was changed to 90
percent federal and 10 percent state. It was expected that the system would be completed no later than
1971, but cost increases and planning delays extended this time by some 25 years. The system grew to a
total length of more than 45,000 miles, connecting nearly all the major cities in the United States and
carrying more than 20 percent of the nation’s traffic on slightly more than 1 percent of the total road
and street system. The Canadian Highway Act of 1919 provided for a system of 40,000 kilometres
(25,000 miles) of highways and provided for a federal allotment for construction not to exceed 40
percent of the cost. By the end of the century, more than 134,000 kilometres (83,000 miles) of highway
had been built, of which approximately 16,000 kilometres (9,900 miles) were freeway.
 History of Philippine Highway
Department of Public Works and Highways or DPWH has been long withstanding as the infrastructure
arm of the Philippines. It started during the Spanish Colonial Era. t was in 1900s when the transportation
depended on roads. At this period, the construction of highways in the Philippines seemed to be
impossible. It was during in the American Period when the roadways were developed in the Philippines.
Just like any other government agencies, its development depended on the administration as result of
changing of administration policies and organization structure. Rehabilitation and construction of roads
occurred after the World War II since a lot of roads were destroyed due to bombs thrown in different
areas. It was paid by the Japanese Government. Philippines was also able to receive grant from the US
government. It was Maximo Paterno who was the first Minister of Ministry of Public Works and
Communications (1899). Since then, it has developed and replicated modern engineering technologies
that ensures safety standards in infrastructure buildings.

Ayala Avenue – 1970

EDSA - 1970

The first expressway systems in the Philippines are the North Luzon Expressway, formerly known as
North Diversion Road and the South Luzon Expressway (SLEx), formerly known as South Super Highway.
Both were built in the 1970s, during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos. The first Elevated Toll Road in
the Philippines is the Metro Manila Skyway or the South Metro Manila Skyway Project, built in 1995 to
1999, during the presidency of Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada. The STAR Tollway I, from Santo Tomas
to Lipa, was opened in 2001; STAR Tollway II, from Lipa to the Batangas City Port, opened in 2008. The
Subic–Clark–Tarlac Expressway or SCTEx Project was initiated under the administration of former
President Joseph Estrada with an original project cost of ₱15.73 billion. Construction was started in 2005
under the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It is the longest tollway in the Philippines
that connects Subic, Clark and Tarlac. It was completed with a project cost of ₱34.957 billion. In 2008,
the SCTEx was formally opened, setting the stage for the development of the TPLEx, which would extend
beyond the SCTEx' terminus in Tarlac City.

North Luzon Expressway South Luzon Expressway

At present time, there are many under construction and proposed expressways in the Philippines. All
the Expressways in the Philippines are privately owned.

Importance of Highway and its significance with respect to Economic Development

Highways play an important role in making travel easier and more expedient. This is of great assistance
whether traveling for work or play as well as travel involving transporting goods. The highway system
connects large metropolises and rural communities across the country. Highway systems have made
expansion possible, provided a convenient means to travel for more lucrative career opportunities, and
allowed businesses to expand and grow nationwide. Highway transportation is especially important
when it comes to the economy. A large number of companies and corporations rely on the expedience
of delivery of their goods and/or services over the road in order to compete in the fast-paced business
world. Highways provide the quickest route from Point A to Point B, meaning that those who must use
this method of delivery will need to utilize the fastest and most direct means of road travel. This is
where the highway system becomes very important. Since time equals money the shortest, most direct
route will prove to be the most lucrative.

The importance or necessity of highway transportation can be easily judged from the following purposes
or advantages of roads:

1. They facilitate conveyance of people, goods, raw-materials, manufactured articles, etc. speedily
and easily in the different parts of a country.
 2. They act as the only source of communication in regions of high altitude i.e in mountainous
regions.
3. They help in growth of trade and other economy activities in and outside the villages and towns
by establishing contact between towns and villages.
4. They help in providing efficient distribution of agricultural products and natural resources all
over the country.
5. They help in price stabilization of commodities due to mobility of products all over the country.
6. They help in social and cultural advancement of people and making the villagers active and alert
members of the community.
7. They help in promoting the cultural and social ties among people living in different part of a
country and thus strengthen the national unity.
8. They help in providing improved medical facilities quickly to human beings, especially to those
who live in rural areas.
9. They provide more employment opportunities.
10. They enhance land value and thus bring better revenue.
11. They serve as feeders for Airways, Waterways and Railways.
12. They help in reducing distress among the people, caused due to famine, by supplying them food
and clothing quickly.

Highways and Economy

Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. By linking producers to markets, workers to
jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda. Since
2002, the World Bank has constructed or rehabilitated more than 260,000 km of roads. It lends more for
roads than for education, health, and social services combined. However, while roads bring economic
and social benefits, they can also come with social costs such as pollution or deforestation.

There are two main ways transport infrastructure can facilitate economic growth. They can create
connections between businesses and input sources, other businesses and their markets. It also
facilitates the movement of raw materials to and from companies as well as the transportation of
finished products to distributors and retail outlets. On the other hand, an effective network is able to
move large volumes of human capital to and from their places of work, to educational institution, social
events and locations where individuals can buy products and services, such as shops.

Submitted to:
Engr. Ryan S. Guevarra
Instructor

Prepared by:
Carlo Michael Villafuerte
BSCE (18-21852)