Friday, March 1, 1968

paving is justified by the revenue, both direct and indirect, produced by raising the road standard. This is particularly true of main truck roads where we go into all-weather standards but on lightly travelled roads we have a much different sit- uation. The mud and dirt are just as big a nuisance but the traffic won’t pay for standard paving. Many different ways in the past have been tried to beat the high cost of roads. Chip seal on gravel, thin pavements on gravel, thin pavements on solid cement have all been tried with some success but all cost too much for the service they yield when applied to a lightly travelled road. This year we propose a different approach. We will stabilize the base in order to be able to apply further pavement if traffic increases later but to top it with slurry seal at the present time. Now this slurry is a mixture of asphalt emulsion with a special sand. It is laid in a thin coating over the prepared base and will, we are encouraged to believe, give several years of paved surface without failure. Eventually the seal will need renewal but the annual cost is expected to be well below the annual cost of standard pavement. A tender will go out shortly for five miles of slurry seal on a solid cement base and two miles over asphalt. The exact location of the work has not as yet been determined but I can say that the work will be distributed in one mile sections to cover several types of road base. Now the costs vary in other provinces from 10¢ to 40¢ per sq. yd. depending on whether the work is done in the country or city areas and depending on the distances materials had to be hauled. It will not be possible to estimate with any accuracy what our costs will be until we open the tenders. Then, if they are too high, we may have to abandon the experiment. It has become apparent in recent years that road work in autumn is likely to be more costly than normal and very unsatisfactory besides. Pavement laid on damp sub-grade often fails during construction and has to be thickened at considerable expense to correct the failure. However, late work frequently fails and has to have a new top within a few years. Even surfacing a road with shale under damp or wet conditions frequently does more harm than good. The roads we haul over are badly cut up and the wet often pressures to mud with disaster— ous results. It is, therefore, clear that we are working too late in the Fall and I propose, if at all possible, to remedy the situation by imposing closing dates for various types of work. These dates which I will later table are being announced well in advance of any construction work so that contractors and Members alike will be aware of these dates and will organize their work accordingly. For 1968 the following closing dates I will suggest to you. No sub-grading after Oct. 15th; no sanding or gravel topping laid after Oct. 3151: and no pavement laid after Oct. 3lst. Pavement is clearly restricted by specifications which state — no pavement may be laid when air temperatures are lower than 50".

Walter R. Shaw: Has any effort been made to close out certain roads that really are not very valuable now? Perhaps there’s two or three roads adjacent to each other and very little traffic on any one of them. There are one or two cases of that kind I know in our . . . .

Hon. George J. Ferguson: I have not made any steps in this direction but I am quite well aware of what you suggest.

Walter R. Shaw: Now, there’s another, Mr. Minister, that is old roads that were in operation as Public Works fifty years ago and have been in operation ever since. There may be one or perhaps two people living on these but the roads have been taken in as a part of the adjacent farms. Now, these roads, I’m not criticiz- ing your Government, Mr. because the same thing happened, applied in our own. These roads are being maintained at public expense. They’ve been built up and widened out, gravelled and in the winter they’re treated the same way as a main highway. The snow is being taken off without any cost to a party that it really would have been . . . .

Hon. George J. Ferguson: Well, actually . . . .

Walter R. Shaw: Now, do you think that that shouldn’t be, that these roads should be done?

Hon. George J. Ferguson: I think it should be looked into.

Walter R. Shaw: I think it really should. I think it’s quite an expensive position.

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