ly reduced somewhat and some of the worst of the low lying
sections are filled in and thereby raised. Short sections of surfacing
such as gravel or broken stone may be placed here and there. From the
standpoint of the responsible official, the road has been "improved,"
but too often such work does not produce an improvement that lasts,
and sometimes it is not even of any great immediate benefit to those
who use the roads. In nearly every instance such work costs more in
money and labor that it is worth.

Lasting improvement of public highways can be brought about only
through systematic and correlated construction carried on for a series
of years. In other words, there must be a road improvement policy
which will be made effective through some agency that is so organized
that its policies will be perpetuated and is clothed with enough
authority to be capable of enforcing the essential features of good
design and of securing the proper construction of improvements.

Details of highway construction and design must vary with many local
conditions and types of surface. The limits of grades and the many
other details of design may properly be adopted for a specific piece
of work only after an adequate investigation of the local requirements
and in the light of wide experience in supervising road improvement.

New ideas are constantly being injected into the art of road building,
but these are disseminated somewhat slowly, so that valuable devices
and improvements in methods remain long unknown except to the
comparatively few who have the means for informing themselves of all
such developments.

It follows then that the logical system of conducting road improvement
is through an agency of continuing personnel which will supervise the
preparation of suitable plans and direct the construction in
accordance with the most recent experience.

=Road Plans.=--The information shown on the plans prepared for road
improvement varies somewhat with the design and with the ideas of the
engineer as to what constitutes necessary information, but in general
the plans show the existing road and the new construction contemplated
in an amount of detail depending principally upon the character of the
construction. Simple plans suffice for grade reduction or reshaping an
earth road surface, while for the construction of paved roads, the
plans must be worked out in considerable detail. The essential
requirement is that there be given on the p