Now! Then! A traffic count is held on Park Road, Sheffield on the quietest day of the week

16 October 1840: A traffic count is held on Park Road, Sheffield on the quietest day of the week

George Calvert Holland. 1843. The Vital Statistics of Sheffield. London: Robert Tyas. Get it:

Excerpt

On Friday, October 16th, 1840, the least busy day in the week, and during a state of great depression in trade, there passed upon this road, between the hours of five in the morning and seven in the evening, 1040 vehicles, chiefly used for the conveyance of coals.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Duke Street and Broad Street are easily found on modern maps of Sheffield’s Park district, but the Park road eludes me, even on older OS charts. Department for Transport stats don’t cover Duke Street, which is said to be comparable to Park Road, but my guess is that the number of vehicles will have risen by perhaps factor 40.

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Original

In the Park District, there are many private roads of considerable length; some leading to the farms are in a very bad condition. The greater part of those intended for streets are newly formed by the auditor of the Duke of Norfolk, and many of them, in every respect, are equal to the public roads. It will be seen by this table, that the Park District is almost destitute of sewers, either public or private, but such is the inclination of the surface, that in a few minutes, after the heaviest thunder storm, the whole of the water which may have fallen entirely disappears. Some improvement in the sewerage, however, is desirable, and will no doubt, ere long, be effected. About £200 were expended in the year 1839, in completing the common sewer in Broad Street, on a sufficiently large scale to form a trunk, to which branches might be conducted to drain the whole of that part of the district, which is densely populous. There is perhaps a larger amount of heavy down traffic on the Park road than on any road within fifty miles. The gradient of it is one in twenty-two. It is rather more than 18 mile in length, and with every facility for obtaining good material at a cheap rate, it costs annually, taking the average of four years, about £1450, which is more than twopence in the pound on all rateable property in the township, or one-sixth of the amount expended on all the common sewers and public highways.[Footnote: On Friday, October 16th, 1840, the least busy day in the week, and during a state of great depression in trade, there passed upon this road, between the hours of five in the morning and seven in the evening, 1040 vehicles, chiefly used for the conveyance of coals.]

Duke Street, Park, is on the same line as the Park Road, having also the same gradient, and there was, during that period, about-equal traffic upon it; but it is paved with boulders.

The following table shows the cost of maintaining each in a good state of repair:

Facts cannot more decisively prove the comparative economy of paved over macadamized roads. A road paved with square stones, all other circumstances being similar to the above, would cost less annually, by £400 per mile, than if macadamised. In consequence of these results established by experiment, many of the great thoroughfares, previously macadamized, have been lately paved with square stones, the consumption of which, in the year 1836-7, being about 8,000 yards; and in 1837-8, about 7,000; 1838-9, about 8,500; 1839-40, about 7,700; 1840-1, about 4,000; and in 1841-2, about 4,500 yards. The public are now feeling the benefit of such an outlay, in the reduction of the highway-rate, which took place a year and a half since, from eightpence to sixpence in the pound.

535 words.