L.T.E. is Cal
Page 34
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ling the Tune
THE attitude of the London Transport Executive towards its undertaking is regarded by the London Chamber of Commerce in much the same way as Procrustes regarded his bed. The bed cannot be enlarged, but the people must be fitted into it, even if it involves cutting off their feet.
In a memorandum sent to the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Town and Country Planning and the War Damage Commission, the Chamber states that it is the business of a public transport undertaking to provide the service required by the citizens, as opposed to "the view now apparently accepted by the L.T.E. that it is for the citizens to adapt their business and their habits to suit the facilities which the Executive is at present able to offer."
The Chamber finds it difficult to believe that there is any insuperable engineering difficulty in building additional tubes and underground railways in London itself. It thinks the many blitzed sites should make the provision of stations comparatively easy, Far
from the position improving as time goes on, it is evident, states the memorandum, that it will grow worse unless two measures arc taken concurrently.
The first cf these is to increase London's transport by building new underground railways and tubes. The second is to stop and then reverse the tendency for workers in London to travel from and to the outskirts, instead of living in it.
In the view of the London Chamber of Commerce, the problem is already large and threatening, and it is merely playing with it to suppose that it can be met by staggering. Staggering has its uses where it can be employed without loss of efficiency, the memorandum says, but to suppose that it can furnish a permanent answer to London's transport problem is to show a complete failure to grasp the magnitude of the present problem and that which lies ahead, and which the Government's own building policy must aggravate.