Buchanan Report's Message Cannot be 'Shelved'
Page 55
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
rUNDAMENTAL problems of urban development and traffic planning were I discussed at the British Road Federation's first regional conference, held yesterday at Newcastle upon Tyne University, and three papers were presented. But although the primary aim of the conference was to examine traffic and planning in the North East, one of its most important features was a clear assessment by Professor Cohn Buchanan of the true significance and influence of his report "Traffic in Towns "; this he explained in his own paper to the conference, "Traffic in Towns—The Next Steps ".
Prof. Buchanan said the question he was most frequently asked in connection with his report was whether he thought it had been "shelved "—asked, he said, in a way which suggested that the questioner thought it had indeed been shelved. And when he asked a questioner why be took this view, the answer showed an expectation that the report would have been accompanied by the announcement of massive investment for the rebuilding of cities to some very definite plan.
This, he said, showed a misunderstanding of the real nature of the report; it was never intended as a " plan " or " programme but was written to influence the way people think and once this process had been started (as he felt confident it had) it was then difficult for the process to be "shelved ".
Prof. Buchanan continued: 'Strictly speaking this report could be ' implemented' without the expenditure of any money at all, because what it really says, to put it in a single sentence, is this: provided reasonable environmental standards are to be secured then the amount of traffic that can be acCepted in an urban area depends on what the community is prepared to spend on physical alterations and what it is prepared to accept in the way of a new look. If the community in question finds that some proposed set of measures is altogether too expensive and too disruptive of familiar scenes, then it can have less expensive and less disturbing measures provided it is reconciled to not having so much traffic. It might even reconcile itself to not spending any money at all, in which case, provided it wanted a civilized environment, it would only be able to have a small amount of traffic."
This, he said, was the single, stark message of the report and he did not think it was a message that could be .shelved. But if it was a message that could not be shelved, it could certainly be misunderstood, as it was by those who thought that it constituted a grandiose plan for the complete rebuilding of all cities with traffic circulating at three or four different levels.
What the report sought to do was to impose a new and tough discipline on those working on the complex and farreaching problems of traffic in towns. A new understanding was required of the breadth of the so-called "traffic problem ", whose enormous ramifications were intertwined with almost every aspect of urban planning. So, in the context of
"the next steps ", the first step was to secure understanding of the message and disciplines of the report. • And such lessons, he thought, could be applied through the statutory development plans, especially in determining the future pattern of land use.
Not Enough Investment
The second step therefore was the methodical overhaul of development plans, to get them onto a sound quantitative basis. The third step, crucial to the whole problem, was to bring a sense of realism into the programming of the proposals, especially those relating to motor traffic. This was an investment issue and the investment position required reappraisal; the Minister's recent statement that investment in urban roads would be running at 1:140m. by 1970 seemed to bear little relationship to the size of the task or the rate at which motor traffic was increasing.
America, Said Prof. Buchanan, seemed lately to have veered towards devoting fuel tax proceeds to road building; this was contrary to their tradition (as it was apparently to ours) but they justified it as a practical, commonsense measure which yielded results. Certainly, even if the British Exchequer continued to take into the common fund the present proceeds of fuel tax and licence duty, the future increment as traffic grew would produce very large sums.
The most critical question was the insertion of new, purpose-designed distribution roads through existing builtup .areas. If these were not built, traffic would have to be curtailed quite severely. There was a faint-heartedness in attitudes towards the possibilities of major works in inner London, he remarked; how extraordinary that Birmingham should have undertaken such major works already and that Liverpool and Glasgow were planning to do so.
On traffic, the Professor stressed the
need for a sense of urgency. Every week, he said, it seemed there were glowing reports about the buoyancy and increasing output of the motor industry. He did not object to this, for, to a large extent. we lived by the manufacture of vehicles, but the day of reckoning must come. Within 10 years the 'number of vehicles would have doubled but Britain would be the same size—and already we had the most crowded roads and towns in the world.
More specific reference to the problems and needs of the North East was
made by the two other main speakers, Mr. Wilfred Burns, city planning officer. Newcastle upon Tyne, and Dr. T. E. H. Williams, Rees Jeffreys Reader in Highway and Traffic Engineering at Newcastle University.
Dr. Williams stressed that the future economic prosperity of the North East-where main-road traffic was increasing at a rate of nine per Cent, compound, per annum—would depend on the efficiency and quality of its road, rail, air and sea communications. He believed that urban development should be closely integrated with the development of the arterial road system and said the most powerful component in modern traffic planning was the motorway. The motorways in the North East should, said Dr. Williams. carry high-speed coaches which would assist the region's economic development by linking the two main conurbations and the other parts of the region.
The success of urban motorways depended, he asserted, on the number and distribution of public transport termini. off-street parking areas and garages. Co-ordination was essential here if hundreds of acres of road space were not to be made sterile by stationary vehicles.
Subsidized Transport
The larger the built-up area, the more important would be the role of public transport, said Dr. Williams, and the problem of saturation flow on some major roads at peak times would get worse unless the sWitch from public to private transport could be halted. Commuters and shoppers would be permanently attracted to public transport only if the economic advantages compensated for the loss of convenience and comfort of the private car. The latent population of private car users within the North East was big enough to justify urgent consideration of subsidies for municipal transport systems to keep fares down.
Dr. Williams detailed Sunderland Corporation's proposals for five radial " bus-only" roads, with associated car parks, and remarked that the short distances involved (0.5 to 0-75 miles) would apply in most North East towns, and were a hopeful feature for the region as compactness lent itself to area controt of traffic circulation.
In his paper, Mr. Burns explained Newcastle's current and future work on traffic and town planning, and pointed out that the city had a vast travel-to-work problem. Over 40 per cent of the total labour force---70,000 people—travelled to work in the city each day and even with decentralization of industry this figure might well rise to 80.000.
He, like Prof. Buchanan, commented on the absence of national research into town living problems and suggested that university and local authority research should be encouraged. H.B.C.