News of the Week Mr. Noel-Baker Advocates Motor Roads
Page 16
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
QPEAKING al Bournemouth on
May 22, in connection with the three boroughs' safety week, Mr. P. J. Noel-Baker, Joint Parliamentary Secretary, M.O.W.T., referred to ring roads and radial arteries oh which only fastmoving traffic would be permitted. He said that his Department was well advanced in planning the beginning of this work.
Motor vehicles, he added, are not like other kinds of road traffic; in weight, speed and momentum they are more like the train, and it cannot be doubted that they also should be segregated. That would involve new motorways through open country and great improvements to existing highways. Ring roads and radial arteries would be introduced in cities and pedestrians
ti.opld be completely barred from access to them.
All this would be a long and costly procets, which might take many years.
In time saved, in leisure, in health, and in the productivity of labour it would mean a return of £25,000,000 a year.
Great capital expenditure could be justified on economic grounds; and he was convinced that it would be made within the next 30 years. Road safety, even against the background of war, had become a great social problem, important to every citizen and comparable with the problems of the slums or preventable disease.
A reform which he thought would come would be a stiffening of the driv-• lug test and longer and more intensive training in -driving.