In the road traction-engine the need for what may be termed _effort_ on the part of the mechanism is much greater, more especially as the competition against horse-traction is conducted on terms so much more nearly level. A team of strong draught-horses driven by one man on a well-loaded waggon is a far more economical installation of power than a two-horse buggy carrying one or two passengers.
The asphalt and macadamised tracks which are now being laid down along the sides of roads for the convenience of cyclists, are the significant forerunners of an improvement destined to produce a revolution in road traffic during the twentieth century. When automobiles have become very much more numerous, and local authorities find that the settlement of wealthy or comparatively well-to-do families in their neighbourhoods may depend very largely upon the question whether light road-motor traffic may be conveniently conducted to and from the nearest city, an immense impetus will be administered to the reasonable efforts made for catering for the demand for tracks for the accommodation of automobiles, both private and public.
The tyranny of the railway station will then be to a large extent mitigated, and suburban or country residents will no longer be practically compelled to crowd up close to each station on their lines of railroad. Under existing conditions many of those who travel fifteen or twenty miles to business every day live just as close to one another, and with nearly as marked a lack of space for lawn and garden, as if they lived within the city. The bunchy nature of settlement promoted by railways must have excited the notice of any intelligent observer during the past twenty or thirty years--that is to say since the suburban railroad began to take its place as an important factor in determining the locating of population.
To a very large extent the automobile will be rather a feeder to the railway than a rival to it; and all sorts of by-roads and country lanes will be improved and adapted so as to admit of residents running into their stations by their own motor-cars and then completing their journeys by rail. But when this point has been reached, and when fairly smooth tracks adapted for automobile and cycling traffic have been laid down all over the country, a very interesting question will crop up having reference to the practicability of converting these tracks into highways combining the capabilities both of roads and of railways.