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"Eighteenth-century English roads have long been presented as
so poor as to have been almost impassable, and historians have
pointed to the innovations of those gravelly heroes, Metcalfe,
Telford, and Macadam at the end of the century as the first
sources of qualitative improvement. In examining elements of
the changing transport system which could account for an
industrial revolution, they naturally tended to look to new
modes of travel, the canal and the railway, and in consequence
to relegate roads to a supportive or complementary role in the
process of change. Turnpike roads were thus disregarded as true
innovations; goods carriage by road seen as prohibitively
expensive; stage- coaches noted but under valued; and the total
impact of changes in road transport not fully understood..."
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