OPINIONS and QUERIES
Page 31
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Better Roads for London After the War I N The Commercial Motor of September 27 there is an item under the heading " One Hears," to the effect that "if parts of London do have to be rebuilt eventually, every opportunity of improving traffic com munications should be made." May I very gently suggest that what happens after an opportunity does not make it, but takes advantage of it.—However, that is a detail and a very slight blemish on your always interesting paper. [We accept this mild reproof, but still consider and hope that not all the opportunities will be made for us, in which case we should have to attend to some ourselves.—En.]
I am writing now to reinforce the argument which is contained in this short paragraph. Just a decade ago, in. 1930, I took some trouble to prepare'a memorandum which was published with the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Transport, urging that London should be opened up and more and wider traffic arteries pro
vided. If had been done, much inconvenience and even suffering would have been saved to the population in these days.
It is a distressing thing, if one goes out into the streets in the early morning after an all-clear signal, to see thousands of people waiting at Tube stations, bus stops, and walking about elsewhere looking for some means for transport to get them home. The lack of street accommodation, together with the deliberate repression of the road-transport industry, has helped to reduce the facilities of that kind of transport which the public unmistakably prefers. Equally, those who may wish to make their way some distance out of the centre of London before taking trains, now have to suffer inconvenience through the same shortsightedness of those who have directed our transport policy.
London is only one example of the difficulties, and even dangers, in which this country is unnecessarily placed because of the interference of vested interests or the blindness of officialdom over the past 15 or 20 years, which have retarded and restricted the one form of transport which is.almost invulnerable against enemy action. Evidence of the elasticity of the road, as opposed , to the rigidity of the rail, is to be found, of late, on every. hand.
This argument, which applies with added force in times of war, is cogent for the purposes of peace. This war has brought to our notice the folly which has prevented the full development and the use of the internalcombustion engine for the purposes of enabling people to get from one place to another with comfort, speed
and convenience. H. E. CRAWiTRD. London, W.C.2.