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POST-WAR PLANNING MI

23rd January 1942
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Page 28, 23rd January 1942 — POST-WAR PLANNING MI
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

" INCLUDE

mai-OgwAy ONE of the best-known authorities on roads is Lt.-Col. Mervyn O'Gorman, CB., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.A.E., who has recently produced the plan for a national road policy which has been published by Temple Press Ltd., as. a -brochure under the -title of "Road Transport–and the National Plan," with a foreword by the Editors ofthis journal and of " The Motor.' We can, in the space at our disposal,. include. only a précis of this plan, for, in extenso, it occupies some 24 pages.

The author commences with the presumption that most people wish that our post-war reconstruction may be guided

by a wise and . flexible physical plan. They are looking forward. to its safeguarding influence on the country, the architectural glory of towns, the standard of • Life, a revived agriCulture, proper fact* location, and, above all, on the housing of the induitrial population.

We niust have these improvements, but there is also the plan Of the roads—a less obvious and more far-reaching one which underlies all these other operations. It Must be expansible for adaptation and to progressive developments. The backbone•must be the motorway.

When the demobilized millions seek for positions, they will demand houses with .easy access. This means a good road plan. If this be not ready, urgent demand Will compel the re-using of old sites, which' again means congestion. The road plan must come first, just as the 'horse must come before the cart:, if not, the buildings will block potential roads and everything else will go askew,

We must not conclude from the high density of most town traffic that there is always lack of room for planned streets. Actually, it is not planned thoroughfares that cause•lack of room. Thus, in London, over 82 per cent. Of the area has no building on it, yet traffic fluidity' in it is deplorable. This shows the prodigious waste; which is estimated for London at' £20,000,000 per annum, that ensues from bad alignment.

Highway Crossings are the ' Birthplaces of Traffic Congestion

Crossings are the birthplace. of congestions, no huge transverse avenues, no widening of narrow streets, can be a. solution, whereas a proper street plan can be, chiefly by .discriminating between what is through traffic and service traffic. These can be segregated on motorways and in town by substituting " weaving " for crossing.

The modern measuring rod is the minute, not the mile. The modern road-vehicle engine enables , any freight to travel to anywhere. That is not an evil, it dispenses 'with animal power, and gives the sweeping advantages of mechanical transport no longer restricted to places along an inadequate mileage of rails, with delivery points only at station congestions. Thus, there are 20,000 miles of railroad against 180,000 miles of roads, and out of 30,300 towns and villages, 31,500 have no railway 'station. There are .scores of areas of many square miles, all more than four miles from any station.

A motor vehicle can serve nine times the routemileage of the train, and deliver at any intermediate point in that mileage, without transhipments. It is the heart's blood of all our circulation and indispensable to our economic vitality. Nothing can reach the Englishman's home without 'going part of the way by road. That is Often good reason for its going all the Way.

In' Britain 3,000,000 motor vehicles, the electric grid, aircraft, 10,000,000 bicycles, 8,000,000 radio sets and ' miiiions of telephones., have made their contribution to our new aptitude for mobility. Industries need no longer be tied-to a few places near coal supplies, ports or big stations. The good road plan could have effectively put at Our dis; posal the complete freedom' of choice of sites for the vast majcrrity of all new industries. The deciding.factors would thenbe the suitability of place to job, and to the national advantage, without any of the oldrtirne compulsionto be near .a station, coal or water. Had we the right road plan, "there would now be.no need for any new " Iight.industry " to. be located in thedensely packed industrial belt.

With' a, Proper road plan._ the fish in bumper catches..at any little harbour. or agricultural produce in sudden excess at the reniotest points, could be 'distributed cheaply; quickly, and fresh, to consumers' doors. None .would have to be returned te the sea, degraded to manure, or left to rot for' ack of pickers. There can be little doubt as to the bad bargain when the State decided to economize on roads, and to pocket the £100.000;000 taxes a year from those machine tools that are alone a.equate to distribute people and things by road. The motor is a tool of production. To tax it is to check 'production, and, therefore, the taxable profits; yet such taxation is contrary to our principles. In .1927, Mr. Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, denounced tne folly of taxation of the plant., tools, or materials of production. but in this case he was pleading for the derating of the railways! In our post-war stage, we shall urgently require to restore the Nation's wealth, and this tax is one of the impediments to be removed at the •earliest date.

The growing appreciation of the value of the new

mobility and not destruction by bombs, give e the planner his opportunity. Will he have the courage to 4raspit? Such a man must first learn the economics of the siteing'Of agriculture, and the new factories, of their mutual dependence on one another, of the quick tranSpOrt, of the suitability of the local labour pool, and on the prOxiMitYof the markets, measured in time, if the country scene is to be saved. Further, the road plan must be started'now,'and not entrusted in a last-minute rush to beauty faddiAS`;

fillway interests, or even road interests. The public good comes first, last, and all the time.

The road plan is more than a scaffolding for other

not only must it come first, but it is fated to remain'. lOrig after buildings have been made or destroyed, for they-ate far more ephemeral than roads. A •good road plan '4Vill make the existing town, big though it may be, worth living in, and that is a long. step 'towards saving the country scene.

In the location of industry, it is remarkable how eXtensive is the area to which it could not wisely be transferred without a migration of the population that would involve the provision of housing, schools, etc., or else the impreiVement of access, or both. This is the gist of a retnark"by Professor E. G. R. Taylor, published in the world's " Geographical Journal' in 1938, and the map which accompanies it is almost startling. It is proof that the existing road plan is out of touch with present desires, needs and powers. During the past 25 years of the motor era, we have been unnecessarily deprived of so many square miles of 13ritniin, that the map referred to is 90 per cent. "black," i.e.,'111 suited for development of industry, whilst the rest of the country suffers from overcrowding, disfigurenaents, and distressed areas, the result of 40 years of unexpired or even trivial transport policy Erroneous Conceptions as to . . Equivalents In Transport Media' There have been many errors which are discIosing.thernselves day by day. One has been to assume that motors and trains provide industrialists and traders with equivalent and, therefore, interchangeable services_ The word went out " You must not use the motor on this run,. because there is a railway line," yet the 'two arp. not equivalent in speed, convenience, flexibility, range, or cost, save in exceptional cases. Another error has been to expect that industry could be forced by taxation and restricting motors, to disregard the twenty-fold .superior convenience and speed of road vehicles, compared with those of the average railway freight Wagon. Live traders know that slow transport is dear transport. Accordingly, for the sake of their businesses, they have had to accept-the handicap of inadequate roads and anomalous motor taxes,.-in order to employ the prompter road service to the limit: Another miscalculation has been to expect that the reduction in vehicles by exaggerating repressive measures, torrid reduce road accidents proportionately in the absence of any steps to curb the unregulated movement of pedestrians. and other highway users, also without segregating "

through" traffic. The demand for motorways has, however, been refused, and the reiterated promises bythe Minister of Transport to build ordinary roads to the tune of millions of pounds, and which actually have been authorized by Parliament, were broken and remained so up to the date of the war.

All forms of motor repression so far, includingspeed limits on tare weight, have failed of their purpose in every direction, and their thorough reform is demanded as' -Part -of the post-war release from the demands of anti-national interests. They have bottle-necked transport, reducedethe promptness of deliveries, helped to choke the parts,. and slowed the turnround of ships. They have hampered the national output, achieved a deplorable distribution of,..the -industrial population, and have had a part sharein"the isolation of areas, leading to their -becoming distretrsed.

They have not even staved off a railway subsidy:' '

• . Our tenderness for established -interests has led nee to

tolerate the handicapping and overtaxing of the newer means for transport. We ought to have supported this new • aid to national wealth production, because it is superior, in being able to pause to pick up and set down anywhere along the whole 180,000 miles of our roads. We have dis couraged the one device that could, in a -war or other emergency, enable each traffic lane of the highway to trans mit three times more tonnage in a week than can an express railway line in the same period. We have discountenanced the one machine which waits at the door for its load, and starts off the moment it is ready—the only machine of which any desired number can be transferred en masse, and instanter, to operate in any part of the country that may urgently require means for transport. The• one technical superiority of the train is its low friction loss,,. therefore, goods belonging to the heavy industries, should go by rail, except when point-to-point speed is urgent. When they go by rail they should be charged such rates that they defray the cost of their conveyance, or, if subsidized as a matter of public prilicy, the money should be taken from the whole community and not be a tax exclusively on the lighter industries.

Actually, railways have intensified, profited by, and exaggerated harmless urbanization into a serious evil. Con centrations of population correspond with the railways' greatest need—large unitary loads. They have, naturally, roped in the horsed van and motor lorry to accumulate their big loads, and their vans, especially with the taxis of travellers, have retarded movement by road and created inordinate traffic congestion in the streets that approach their railway stations in the large towns.

Much of the countryside has been deprived of the fluid and cheap road-transport services that would have fertilized its agriculture and helped to keep satisfied workers on the land, by giving them adequate contact with the interests of the town. The principle which must be enlisted to give drivers of road vehicles full fluidity of movement is that Of totally segregating from one another incompatible categories of traffic, whenever this can be done by structural

means. Service traffic should not be intermingled with through traffic, and the motorway scheme that we ought forthwith to prepare, is the thread that alone can hold together the many pearls that our sociologists are planning for post-war England.

Motorways Could, in Fairness, Be Exclusive to Motor Traffic

For the building of 2,000 miles of motorways, the State alreeirly collects, in excess of the annual road bill, more than sufficient money over three years from the motorist alone, therefore, the motorways can, without unfairness, be reserved to motor traffic. They help through traffic, as having no frontages, no doors opening on to the road, no footways or farm gates, there is no temptation for see, vice traffic to enter. Through-going vehicles, heavyor light, on motorways are found to achieve a point-to-point speed but little less than the usual maximum allowed. A ,proper motorway has no rba.d crossings, or T junctions, the vehicles entering-or leaving in such a way that they do not interfere with the continuity or speed of flow of the main stream.

The motorway is dualized in two 25-ft. widths, With gentle curves, no blind bends or bumps, designed to carry 7 tons per axle, and to allow an unlimited number of trailers to be drawn. There are no slippery places, and no raised kerbs, whilst a grass verge at least 8 ft. wide can be kept clear, as a safe run-off. Safety, fuel and tyre economy, scenic charm and speed, can be happily combined without desecrating the country scene, or causing vibration, noise, smoke, dust or danger to any house. The old roads are emptied of a large part of the burden of vehicles which should never have been thrust, upon them. The cost will not outweigh the admitted merits.

Motorways mean a vast economy of capital expenditure on the roads to which we are already committed. If the ill-considered traffic road scheme of the Ministry of Transport be dead, let it stay dead, and the requirements met by•a few motorways involving half the expenditure, tieing land one-fifth as valuable, and requiring one-tenth of the time with less than half the mileage of road construction. It has been officially estimated that 2,000 miles of motorways can be completed at a cost of £120,000,000, and if

achieved by our engineers at only half the rate of road building on certain foreign motorways, this Mileage could be in use in six years from the start, whilst the complicated task of modifying existing trunk roads is estimated to take 45 to 90 years, and cost £240,000,000.

No one can pretend, without excessive study, to indicate

the best lines for these motorways. The exploratory research would no doubt be partly guided, at the outset, by that which decided the lines of the 4,500 miles of traffic roads marked out by the then Ministry of Transport, partly by work which the County Surveyors' Association put into its scheme for 1,000 miles of motorways, and partly by the broad outlines of the sociological and industrial plan, that is presumably being initiated under Lord Reith's Council.

Better Planning foi, Transport

in Large and Growing Towns

The attrasction of a town is founded on its one precious quality, that of providing in its early days easy and prompt access by road to every market, church, theatre, or other focus of attraction, to other citizens,' and to the countryside, but it begins to lose this as its roads become blocked Ly'groing traffic. Until such time as congested roads and crowding begin to strangle quick access, the more the town population multiplies, the more varied are the contacts, economies and attractions it offers, the more activities it inspires and the more extensive are the powers the citizens may control by combination. The growth imposes lengthy journeys and calls for a more than proportionate increase of the crossings of vehicle routes, and of traffic of all kinds. These diminutions of the initial accessibilities evoke grumbling, but strangely little public insistence on the specific provision of an adequate road plan which would restore the accessibilities.

There is but one solution: it is to get rid, wherever possible, of crossings and cross traffic. Underground railways give only a semblance of the accessibility afforded by roads, their Yelief is. localized. Outside the, gates they amass congregations of people, and congestions of vehicles. If no healthy tan colours the town dweller's cheek, the reason is that it takes him too long to travel to where the sunlight is of real actinic value. If he crosses the town, he must venture his life in congestions and road risks, created by the urgent quest for simile.? desiderata by a great multitude, Bad road transport wastes 10 per cent, of his time, adds 10 per cent, to the cost of what he buys, and cuts him off from shops, industries, friends, etc., at the far side of the town, more than if it were many miles away in the country.

The defeatest plan is bodily to transfer the far side of the town to a spot many miles away, and there set up a little town, but is there no better plan, no possibility of freeing our wonderful mechanical vehicles, so that tlibey can give us the benefit of the power that is fn them? Win, not reduce the number of crossings? It is practical politics. Every roundabout achieves a little of this. We must learn from this device and closely surround each town by a circular motorway, thus enabling vehicles to substitute, for the obstructive act of crossing, the easier acts of overtaking and weaving.'

The making of a new street plan should be seized upon, as a heaven-sent opportunity of abolishing or minimizing thetraffic hold-ups, caused by digging up the carriageway to attend to buried conduits. The systems of these which are normal necessities of civilized life, are: water, electricity, the telephone, the telegraph, gas, and, in some cases, hydraulic power. All need attention, mostly at unforeseen and different times, and such attention is -a grave detriment to vehicle circulation. The &ft. verges • of a circumferential motorway would provide a unique chance for the increase of circular mains, whilst in :the countryside similar provision for telegraph and telephone wires would .afford economies of road up-keep and transport costs. Along other roads telegraph wires, when buried, should be run on the field side of the hedges. Thus the national plan becomes based on two sorts of motorway—linear,, to link the counties wherein we house our agriculture and industries, and circular to facilitate the through traffic where population has condensed itself into crowded towns.


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