PEOPLE AND CITIES
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... and the role of transport ASTRONG attack on the Government's attitude to the Buchanan Report was made by Sir Geoffrey Crowther, who was the chairman of the Report's steering group, when he spoke during this week's " People and Cities" Conference in London on Tuesday. The Conference, organized by the British Road Federation and the Town Planning Institute, was especially topical. Inevitably, two transport problems were examined in many of the papers presented (most of them written well before publication of the Buchanan Report): the conflicting interests of urban traffic and the amenities of the areas it serves, and the balance between private and public transport.
But in a speech not circulated to the ress or delegates, Sir Geoffrey said that ie suggestion in the Report that regional welopment agencies should be set up td been turned down flat by the Govern-. ;ent—" the only positive statement they we made on the Report". Moreover,
✓ Geoffrey continued, the Government td•made no alternative suggestions other an to say they hoped to see if the 84; istion would work • first before taking ty 'action. "This Won't work. This is
e sort of thing that brings societies rw' n and we are in grave danger t.,f fling., not because it will cost too much, • because plans won't be made; but ;cause we won't organize ourselves )fitically and socially to see that the b gets done."
The Minister Of Transport opened the dnference. After explaining why he had t up the Buchanan inquiry, Mr. Marples id that transport surveys "of the most iinprehensive nature" would be made all the major conurbations. Whatever
e private motorist might say, public tnsport undoubtedly must play an :ormous part in the future. Transport ierators had got to meet the challenge the private car by making their transirt more attractive and the Ministry IS attempting to find out' what sort of Search could be done in •ofaito make so.
The first speaker in the Conference ts Professor Buchanan Ilimself. His osen title. "Traffic in Towns ", was at of his voluminous report. "As we • the position ", he said, "the essential mmercial, industrial and business &lc, including the use of many cars, Jst be catered for. The cut, if there s to be one, must fall on the optional
less essential use of vehicles for arncys which either need not really be tde at all or where there is some other rm of transport available.
If there was to be a restraint on the ▪ of cars for commuting, then the plications for public transport were of ramount importance. It was here that whole future case and basis for public insport rested, he continued.
If there was to be a hold-up in urban Jevelopment it would come from oplc's minds—from a refusal to underid the importance of towns; from fear experiment; from a political system which tended to force us into policies of expedience; from sheer bogging down in the complexity of our own rules and resultations and rigid ideas on property rights. • Mr, R. Gresham Cooke, M.P., suggested that motoring organizations should recommend to their members, and go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and propose, that vehicles wishing to go, into the eight conurbations in the country should pay • an additional £5 annually for so doing. This money should go towards an urban development fund, an'd the Government should be asked to match the sum so raised £ for £. This would bring in £50 m. to start with. Vehicles not displaying this special urban development licence would not be allowed into the conurbations.
Dr. R. .1, Smeed (Road Research Laboratory). suggested that incentives might, be possible to urge commuters to increase the numbers of persons travelling to work in their vehicles. This was discouraged at the moment because it was illegal to accept payment for passengers in cars. Car commuters might prefer such greater car occupancies to being forbidden to use their cars in towns althgether. He suggested, also, that sufficient incentive would persuade commuters to stagger their working hours.
Little Relief
In"Policies for Large Boroughs" Mr. Wilfred Burns, Newcastle upon Tyne's city planning officer, produced surprising figures to show how little " bypassable " traffic occurs in city centres today; a survey showed that an outer eastern by-pass for Newcastle would relieve the central area of only 4 per cent of the present load, and one to the west would draw oft only 2.2 per cent.
Talking of an urban development plan, he said vast changes in bus routeing would be necessary because the plan should wholeheartedly follow the policy of making main radial and ring roads into motorwas or high-capacity roads, and the bus would therefore not be oriented on to these major networks but rather through the "neighbourhood" roads.
The urban bus was quite out of scale with most town centres, said Mr. Burns, it was noisy and, in hilly towns, a creator of fumes. It was becoming progressively more out of scale with its environment and there was a great unexplored field in which bus operators and civic designers could profitably co-operate.
Mr. Burns also doubted the wisdom of bus/rail competition on the current scale; buses could perhaps be used instead to feed rail services. And was there, he asked, perhaps a future for small, automatically guided buses within a given radius of a city centre? In any event, he thought we should now be considering separate bus lanes in cities, and provision for full public transport access to shopping centres so that passengers had only
short walks to their destinations. In. Newcastle, he remarked, they had planned an underground bus route to drop passengers at the very heart of the new shopping precinct.
But city transportation systems had to be integrated, and private car use in town centres would need restriction, he added.
In "Policies for the New Towns Mr. L. Hugh Wilson, chief architect and planning officer, Cumbernauld, described in detail the way in which traffic forecasts may be made, taking first the fundamental fact that traffic is generated by land use, then analysing the likely types of traffic generated by different groups of users.
This had been put into effect in planning Cumbernauld, where it had been possible to design for mixed communications from the start and to separate pedestrians from traffic as far as practicable. After describing the method of estimating which forms of travel would be used to and from work, he showed how figures of II per cent on foot, 44 per cent as car drivers, 20 per cent as car passengers and 25 per cent by public transport were evolved for Cumbernauld. Mr. Wilson commented that since this estimate was prepared, it had become more reasonable to assume a figure of 16 per cent for public transport.
In Cumbernauld town centre, multi deck development permits separation of traffic and pedestrians, and goods from the low-level roadway are taken direct from the loading docks into the storage areas of shops or are conveyed by hoists to the shopping or storage levels above.
The renewal of urban centres was a
main theme of the paper by Mr. L. S. Marler, chairman, Capital and Counties Property Co. Ltd., who was insistent that traffic should not dictate the planning of a town centre. Mr. Mader quoted with approval from a proposal by a Mr. Leslie Lane that in a town of, say; 100.000 people, an inner ring road should he constructed and within this area all normal vehicles would be banned. Car parks would be built around the perimeter and the municipality would provide low-built electrically driven platform vehicles moving at 10 m.p.h. across the town centre, allowing passengers to hop on and off at 100-yd. intervals. For goods, depots would be provided around this town centre and delivery from these depots to retail outlets would be by a variety of vehicles of the type used in warehouses or on milk rounds.
Continental Views Belgium, France and Germany were represented by speakers at the conference, and if it was heartening to see that they faced similar town traffic problems to those in Britain, and interesting to see how differently they reacted to them, it was perhaps salutary to see how boldly they seemed in general to have proposed or adopted solutions.
To some extent, it appears Paris has already anticipated the Buchanan Crowther "environmental areas ". M. G. Gallienne, president -of the Union Routiere de France, speaking on "Paris 2,000 A.D.", described how a system of user zoning had already been adopted in the master plan for Paris, with a business zone here, an administrative zone there, and a university zone in another place. But in this there was nothing comparable with Prof. Buchanan's proposed separation of traffic according to zone.
M. Gallienne stressed that since Paris was "exploding" outwards, transport was to be speeded up to keep journey times about the same despite the longer distances involved. Parisian rush-hour traffic is two-way, as 700,000 suburban dwellers work in the city centre. whilst some 200,000 city-centre people are employed in the suburbs.
In 1958, total passenger movements between city centre and suburbs" were in the proportion of 6 by rail to 9 by bus, with 7.5 by private car and 2.5 on twowheeled vehicles. Some 76 per cent of the movements were by road. The expansion of Paris leaned very heavily on increasing use of the private car, M. Gallienne said. New high-speed roads were planned, he said, including 10 radial four-lane motorways; capacity for 400,000 extra vehicles was to be added to the present road system.
Underground railways were also to be given priority and the possibility of above-ground monorail lines was being studied. But parking requirements for private cars were considered an essential complement of public transport: it was planned to provide tens of thousands of parking spaces, with 40,000 to 60,000 close to the peripheral ring-road or at rail or bus terminals.
His organization, said M. Gallienne, was utterly opposed to money for urban road developments coming from tolls or congestion taxes aimed at the ear user, who was already heavily burdened.
Dusseldorf is another city in which considerable priority in rush-hour transport is being given to the private car. In his illustrated talk on "TownStaping Dusseldorf ", Professor F. Tamms, commissioner for building and planning, said it was not intended that access to the city centre should be made more difficult for drivers of vehicles; wide streets had opened up this part of the city and parking garages had been or were being built, while pedestrian precincts had been created. But in addition to this, oppor tunities were to be taken to improve an develop public transportation; the rnajo public facility was the extensive trar service, and relocation of part of thi underground in the city centre was bein considered, together with an extension o the tramways to 'remoter districts b means of rights' of way for trams only.
Brussels is already well known for it road reconstruction in recent years an M. Andre Saccasyn, inspector-genera Roads and Bridges Administratica Belgium, in 'a paper "The Economi Value of Road Development" describe this in detail. Of particular interest wer the figures for operating economies whic he gave, taken from tests with mediurr weight goods vehicles and tractor-trails combinations. On 51 miles of city road chiefly affected by improvements, when the average speed of traffic had rise from 20 m.p.h. to 40 m.p.h. on the inns ring road and the Avenue Louise, fts consumption was reduced by 33 per cer for the heavier vehicles and about 30 ps cent for the .medium lorries'. On a te run . with a Renault 24-tonner—earryin on this occasion 3,300 lb.—the averas speed over the section increased from previous 11 m.p.h. to 25 m.p.h. and ft,' consumption improved from 14 m.p.g. t 18 m.p.g. M. SaccasYn also pointed ot that maintenance costs and depreeiatie would be usefully reduced by the Ire running made possible on the improve roads.
He also gave figures for a series r "local delivery" tests with a Peugeot 4( van on the inner ring road, Which Shows a time saving of 51 per cent and a resits tion in fuel requirement of 42 per cei compared With the previously congests conditions.