Paving is the skill needed to pave dirt for faster travel.
Road construction is very important in wurm, it lets you go places - fast. On a paved road you can reach speeds up to 17.3131km/h compared to the 11km/h on grass and less then half of that on sand. That in combination with finding your way around (which many seems to have trouble with in wurm) makes it
pretty obvious that roads are a good thing to have.