OCR Text |
Show BETTER ROADS MINIMUM WIDTH OF HIGHWAY Hard-Surface Roads Should Be at Least Eighteen Feet Wide for Safety of All Concerned. (Prepared by the United Statej Department of Agriculture.) A minimum width of IS feet for hard-surface roads Is recommended by the bureau of public roads of rtie United States Department of Agriculture. Agricul-ture. The maximum width of truck body generally permitted Is S feet, and 5 feet Is the ordinary clearance width of automobiles. At an average spwd of 30 miles an hour It Is unreasonable un-reasonable to expect the driver of an automobile to drive with the wheels closer than 1V4 feet to the edge of the pavement, says the bureau. For trucks at an average speed of VS miles an hour, this distance should not m& mm mz mi .,m Sheridan-Big Horn Road'in Wyoming Before and After Improvement. be less than 1 feet on account of the great width of the rear wheel. Three feet seems to be a minimum safe clearance between bodies. Inasmuch Inas-much as a certain amount of truck traffic is to be expected on all main country roads, the minimum width of surface should be 18 feet to provide these clearances when an automobile meets a truck. Where the frequency with which trucks pass each other becomes a big factor, as In the neighborhood of large cities, the minimum width of pavement pave-ment should be 20 feet to provide a clearance of feet and a safe distance dis-tance of wheels from edge of pavement. |