Fewer Service Areas on Motorway
Page 55
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THERE have been second thoughts at 1 the Ministry of Transport about the location of service areas on the LondonBirmingham motorway. Instead of placing them at 12-mile intervals, as at first planned, • there will now be only two, or possibly three, on the road between St. Albans by-pass and Watford Gap in Northamptonshire.
During a tour of the half-completed motorway on Monday, Mr. Harold Watkinson, Minister of Transport, said he thought too many service areas would encourage loitering and that those opened when. the road came into use would consist only of petrol pumps and a towing service. In the light of experience, fuller facilities might be proVided in the future.
Progress on the London-Birmingham motorway is good—many stretches are now having eat's-eyes installed—and if the summer is no worse than average the road should be completed on schedule at the end of October.
"LIGHT THE .MOTORWAYS" DEGRET at the decision not to-light IX the new motorways was expressed yesterday by Mr. 0. W. Humphreys, director of the research laboratories of the General Electric Co.. Ltd., in an address to the 11th British Electrical Power Convention at Torquay. He was convinced that the reversal of this policy could cmlY be a matter of time.
• DANGEROUS LOADS BY ROAD THE Foreign. Secretary has presented • 1 to Parliament the European agreement -concerning the international carriage of dangerous goods by road. This was drawn up at Geneva in 1957, but has not yet been ratified by Britain.