Chapter 91 Road Construction
8:25 A.M
Landon had told the workers to come to the lower region earlier than usual.
He wanted them to load up the tools for land mapping into the loading trucks, and head out to District E..
Within this week, Landon wanted all 5000 men to learn everything about road construction.
Hence, he decided to use this week as training time for the men.
And although they were usually given 2 days off within a week, Landon wanted them to work all 7 days straight.... just for this time frame..... Of course they would definitely be paid extra for their overtime.
After their training week, Landon would then divide them into different groups based on the different jobs within road construction.
Some would be in charge of land excavation, leveling the land, digging up trenches for road water drainage, gravel adding, tarring, and so on.
For now, this week would be used to familiarize the workers with every part of road construction.
He also decided to start with the street roads around the residences, instead of the highways/major roads.
Firstly, the main highway road in Baymard Is currently used very often.
The soldiers and horses use on them daily to leave from the upper region to their posts by the gates, and other areas within Baymard.
Carriages, wagons and other supply trucks also use these roads to supply bags of food to the stores, military, schools and so on.
Hence there was no point in starting with them now.
Plus highway roads were really stressful to create.
There might be a possibility that Baymard would be overpopulated, and filled with numerous cars in the future.
Hence, Landon would also need to make 'highway road bridges' within the city.
Back on earth, all cities had road bridges.
If one wanted to head over to the mall, downtown or any congested area, there were lanes on Bridges that took one around traffic and so on.
These bridges were usually supported by large pillars, and were a must in lessening car accidents, aiding in traffic control and so on.
And although most of the highway roads would be on ground level, Landon couldn't deny the amount of stress Highway bridges would cause him.
Therefore, anything highway, would definitely be done last.
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Once they were in the District E, Landon and the men began to offload the trucks.
They had brought paint, several 2 meter long Iron rods, ropes, measuring tapes and so on.
Today, they were going to focus on mapping out the roads.
The topography for the central and upper regions were really superb for construction.
Both had what geography would call, a 'Plain topography'.
Plains were flat sweeping landmasses, that generally didn't change much in elevation.
They usually occurred at the doorstep of mountains, or by any coastal region.
And one should know that at the back of Landon's castle in the upper region, was a huge unexplored mountain range.... And the coastal region was also very close to the central region.
Hence both the upper and the central regions were basically plains.
These regions were like clear green football fields, or clear safari fields were animals grazed openly in Africa.
One could say that they looked like parks for kite flying... clear, green and perfect for construction.
The grass in these regions were only ankle level, and really less stressful compared to the lower region that was filled with rocks and trees.
Of course there were trees in these regions as well, but they spread wide apart...as opposed to a densely packed jungle.
Imagine several football fields that had only 1 or 5 trees on each field...That's how these regions looked like.
But having this kind of topography wasn't always a blessing.
Landon realised that if he wanted to make a National park in future, he would need to plant several trees within District G.
What a drag.
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Landon placed a 2 meter iron rod in the ground, at the left side of the entrance/exit from the upper region.
This rod would indicate the starting point for District E.
"Alright.. So far, all of you have your road map plan for this district, in your hands.
For the next 2 days, we will all map out some of the roads using this rod, and the carriage road as our reference points."
Landon and the men immediately got to work.
"His Highness said that every after 168 meters (550 feet), we need to make roads that leave the main Carriage highway and lead to the the residential roads within the District."
"Your right, I think his highness said that these spaces were called 'City blocks'."
"So what we need to do now is mark up all the roads, as well as block areas.....right?"
"Correct"
The men discussed amongst themselves as the work progressed.
Generally, city blocks shouldn't be too long or too short.
If it was too long, the pedestrians wouldn't feel safe, and when they were walking, they would feel like they weren't making any progress at all towards their destinations.
That's why back on earth, people didn't really approve of the block sizes of several places like Manhattan, that had a block size with length 246 feet, and a width of 900 feet.
The people felt like it was too long and not safe.. plus there were really no shortcuts around the blocks.
On the other hand, smaller blocks, weren't always better either.
Portland City in the U.S.A, was the darling of road blocks.. And had a block length of 200 feet, as well as a width of 200 feet.
That city offered short blocks, and had alot of shortcuts for those without cars.
But on the downside, those with cars were constantly annoyed by these short blocks.
The smaller the blocks, the more time those driving spend on traffic lights... Which in turn makes them late for important engagements.
Plus on an economical point of view, as block size shrinks, more street roads would be made.
Street roads cost money to maintain, as opposed to a retail occupied land which generated tax revenue yearly from electrical bill's and so on.
Hence, Landon decided to make his own blocks to be an average of the 2 comparisons.
For the residential areas, Landon decided to that the city blocks should have a length of 223 feet (68 meters), and a width of 550 feet (168 m).
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After lunch, Landon felt like they had marked more than enough blocks along the Carriage highway.... So he divided the men into 3 groups.
2000 of them were to continue marking the roads along the carriage road.
Another 2000 were to take each marked road and start marking their way across the fields, and further into the District.
And finally, 1000 of them were to start marking the spaces along the already marked roads, for rain water drainage pipes. As well as water supply pipes and sewage drainage pipes.
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As the work progressed, Landon was happy with how much work these 5000 men had accomplished.
Landon knew that he wouldn't be here the next day, so he instructed the workers on what areas he wanted marked while he was away.
Tomorrow, he needed to supervise the first official Military exam for the May recruits.
But for now, it was 3:00 P.M..... And he had a date with Department C6.
Time to teach the electrical engineers in training about how to make light bulbs.