Beginning in the 1840s, the rapid development of railroads brought the construction of lightweight Trésaguet-McAdam roads to a virtual halt. For the next 60 years, road improvements were essentially confined to city streets or to feeder roads to railheads. Other rural roads became impassable in wet weather.

The initial stimulus for a renewal of road building came not from the automobile, whose impact was scarcely felt before 1900, but from the bicycle, for whose benefit road improvement began in many countries during the 1880s and ’90s. Nevertheless, while the requirements of the lightweight, low-speed bicycle were satisfied by the old “macadamized” surfaces, the automobile began to raise its own seemingly insatiable demands as the world entered the 20th century.