In the States, counties, and towns certainly not over five per cent of the highway officials possess the training and experience necessary to efficiently and economically perform the duties imposed upon them. With reference to municipalities and incorporated villages, the percentage may be increased to twenty-five.
The chaotic conditions and waste of public funds indicated by the above facts may be attributed primarily to three factors: first, too intimate relationship between politics and highway work; second, the attitude of the public; third, the status of the engineer in public life.
As this Society (Engineers’ Society of Northeastern Pennsylvania) is composed of engineers familiar with public activities, a statement of the innumerable disadvantages resulting from the control of highway work by political appointees would be a repetition of platitudes.
It is to the people and the engineer that these brief remarks will be devoted. The public neither appreciates the character of the duties of highway officials nor does it take proper interest in the expenditure of its funds. The people must not only be educated with respect to the complex work for which highway officials are held responsible and the waste of public funds directly attributable to having highway work in the hands of laymen, but also they must be shown that engineers are broad-minded, well-educated men, capable of holding with credit the highest administrative offices, and who do not constitute a tribe of human beings capable only of running a transit, turning a lathe, or wiring a house.
FAILURE OF ROADWAY SURFACE DUE TO POOR FOUNDATIONS
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FAILURE OF ROADWAY SURFACE DUE TO POOR FOUNDATIONS
LOOK AT THE FOUNDATIONS ON THESE FOREIGN HIGHWAYS Why not on ours ?
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