REPORT OF STATE ENGINEER. To His Excellency The Governor and the Honorable Council: I have the honor to submit herewith a report on the work done under Chapter 35, Laws of 1905, said report covering the period from the passage of Act, February 24, 1905 to November 15, 1906. As two years from the passage of the Act will not have expired until February 24, 1907, and as considerable work is in progress upon which payment is to be made and will be made out of the appropriation for 1905 and 1906, with consequent payments to be made by the State to the towns, the report submitted herewith is not in every respect complete, and this fact should be considered in comparing expenditures and results. STATE AID ROADS IN TOWNS AND CITIES. In the year of 1905 applications for state aid were received from 191 towns and two cities. The limited time between the passage of the law and the receipts of applications from the towns was insufficient to permit a systematic working organization of the state engineer's department in season to commence actual construction of work early in 1905, and it was impossible to get the first contract advertised for bids before June 7, hence no work was actually commenced until about July 1. From this date to the end of the season contracts were advertised as rapidly as possible, and during the year ninety-three contracts were advertised, fifty of which were let. A small amount of work was done in six other towns, under the clause in the law permitting work amounting to less than one hundred dollars to be done without competitive bids. Hence work was done in 1905 in 56 towns and cities out of 193 that applied. In 1906, a few towns, desiring to see the general results of the state aid law before making further application, neglected to make application, thereby reducing the number of applications received to 162. The combined applications of 1905 and 1906 showed on May 1, (the date when all applications must be received) that there were 186 contracts to be let. Of this number 180 have been advertised, resulting in letting 170 contracts, of which 124 have been let to selectmen, acting in behalf of the towns, and 46 have been let to contractors. When construction work was commenced, there was not a contractor resident in the state who owned the equipment necessary for the construction of a road, neither were there many towns that had the necessary equipment, and the limited amount to be expended in each town offered little inducement to outside contractors. These conditions are much improved today, several towns and a few contractors having purchased crushing machinery, rollers and other utensils, and it can be safely predicted that a number of towns and contractors will purchase road building machinery the coming season. The experience of towns owning machinery and carrying out their own contracts should be a lesson to other towns not so fortunate; for example, in 1905, one town let a contract to a contractor for the construction of 7 a macadam road at one dollar per lineal foot. A progressive town nearby secured the necessary machinery and bid $.95 per lineal foot for constructing the same kind of road under practically the same conditions, and after finishing their > road, the cost to the town figured only about $.75 per foot. Another comparison that is typical is in a town where bids for building a gravel road were submitted by two contractors of long experience, the lowest of these bids being sixtyseven cents per foot. The town bid forty-five cents per foot and was awarded the contract. At the completion of the work, it was found to have cost only about forty-three cents per foot. Three hundred dollars invested in a horse roller and three selectmen invested with a little ambition can, in a few years, make a great change in the condition of the roads in a small town. An additional investment of $1,800.00 for a complete portable stone crushing plant would not be a serious burden on a town of $500,000 to $1,000,000 valuation and would enable such a town to build a good macadam road, although a steam roller is necessary to get the best results. An investment of $5,000 for a complete road building outfit, including a steam roller, would not be a serious burden on a town of over $1,000,000 valuation, and would enable such a town to build the best of macadam roads at the lowest cost. When the contracts now incomplete shall have been completed there will be about 105 miles of road constructed under the state aid law, (exclusive of state roads), consisting of about 21 miles of macadam at an average cost of $5,600 per mile, and about 84 miles of gravel, at an average cost of $2,200 per mile. The roads constructed are distributed in short pieces all over the state, and are particularly conspicuous on account of the fact that in general the portions selected for improvement were exceptionally bad sections. A very important result of the construction of these improved pieces of road, and a result that will be more noticeable each year, is the excitement of interest and ambition in local authorities to improve other sections of road in a similar manner, guided by the knowledge obtained by performing or observing the work done under state direction. During the past year several sections of road have been built by town authorities, using the same methods as required by the state, thus increasing and extending the results of the state aid law far beyond the limits permitted by the appropriations under the state aid law. The roads selected for improvement have been in general the principal main roads through the towns, but in some in stances the selectmen, exercising the right of choice accorded to them under the law, have insisted strongly upon the money being expended upon roads of local rather than universal importance, in several instances insisting upon a division of the funds for improvement of two or more roads in order to satisfy the demands of their constituents. This departure from the principal main roads and division of the funds to satisfy various sectional interests in some towns results in preventing the consummation of a general plan of trunk lines of road, yet this condition must necessarily continue under the present highway law, which makes the state authorities and town authorities concurrent bodies, hence if no agreement is reached between the state and the town authorities upon questions of location, the work of improvement cannot be carried out. The disposition shown by the majority of the selectmen to make selections of roads that are a benefit to neighboring towns and eventually to the whole state, rather than selecting roads that are almost wholly of local benefit, is very commendable, while the apparent lack of public spirit shown by others is justified in some cases by the poor conditions of the roads and the financial condition of the towns where their interests lie. A serious hindrance to the successful execution of the requirements of the highway law has been the lack of bidders. If no effort other than advertising for bids and mailing notices to contractors had been made, it is probable that not more than twenty percent of the contracts would have been let. Only through active personal effort has it been possible to get contractors or selectmen to take hold of the work. As previously stated, the small sums to be expended in each town offer little inducement to contractors, the cost of equipment and organization being about as large for a one thousand dollar contract as it as for a contract ten times as large, and in order to get reasonable profit, the prices bid for the items in a small contract will necessarily be much higher than in a large contract. The hindrance caused by lack of bidders could be largely overcome by permitting the |