The "movement" was of course a continuous effort, hard to say when it started. In England, a major improvement effort was done around 1810-1830 by a rich noblem

The "movement" was of course a continuous effort, hard to say when it started. In England, a major improvement effort was done around 1810-1830 by a rich nobleman, who was irritated by having to use very bad country roads to go to his local nobility political meetings (can't recall his name at the moment), and he was going there by horse. He had a scientific mind and devoted last decades of his life to studying road construction techniques and writing up the results. Since he had money and political clout, his ideas were adopted, and later spread across Great Britain, leading it to having by far the best roads in the world at the time.