Nice little piece in the State Journal today about the history of paving roads in Wisconsin.
What sort of amused me was this passage: Farmers called this unnecessary government intervention and denounced > bicyclists as lazy "city dudes." They urged lawmakers to restrict bicycles. > Tension between rural residents and urban bicyclists simmered for more > than a decade. Some things never change. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/odd-wisconsin-bicycles-not-cars-spawned-first-good-roads/article_0a9e96d4-083a-53e3-9434-ae8cb0fe696f.html I once looked into the history of why almost all the roads in the southern 2/3 of Wisconsin are paved. That is very rare. We always hear, "It's the dairy industry." But the dairy folks in Vermont just sniff at that idea. "We have a major dairy industry, and we can get around without paving the rural roads." One of these days, I'm going to dig down into this idea. People have told me that the easy availability of the materials for paving - gravel, sand, and rock, nicely sorted thanks to the glaciers - also led to more paved roads here than in other states. Robbie Webber Transportation Policy Analyst 608-263-9984 (o) [email protected]
_______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
