The Importance 1
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ublic Transport
THE only possible and workable traffic policy for existing cities and towns must be based on a co-ordinated transport system, worked out separately for each town and providing in the first instance for the maximum efficient running of public transport services, together with a limited number of large interconnected and electronically controlled car parks sited near publictransport stations on the fringe of the central area for commuters using private cars. This was one of the main points made by Mr. Walter G. Bor, city planning officer, Liverpool, in his paper on the environmental approach to urban traffic presented at the Engineering for Traffic conference in London this week.
Mr. Bor, whose paper was one of 16 presented at the four-day conference opened by Mr. Marples, said there must be a compromise between the extremes of 100 per cent private-car penetration of city centres, and the complete restriction of private traffic. A dense net of public transport routes within the central area was essential, and any car parks allowed in central areas would have to be geared carefully to the capacity of road space remaining after allowing for public transport, including taxis.
He also drew attention to the Minister of Transport's involvement in a value judgment between the conflicting demands of environment and traffic, citing the Highgate battle over the London lorry route and pointing out that the Minister had implicitly conceded that the disturbance and loss of amenity would outweigh the advantages of a speedier lorry route. Mr. for quoted other examples of "our fumbling and panicky attempts to accommodate the ever-increasing traffic flows. . . . "
Mr. Bur concluded by asserting that development of a good urban environment and an efficient, cheap public transport system must go hand in hand,
In a paper on the planning approach to traffic movement, Mr. Wilfred Burns, city planning officer, Newcastle upon Tyne, said that before Dr. Beeching came on to the scene everyone had been making traffic projections without any real thought about transportation generally. "We had perhaps too glibly accepted that public service vehicles would continue to fight a long drawn-out rearguard action as private-car ownership increased." But, he said, accepting the present proposition that uneconomic rail services be abandoned, carefully considered growth factors applied to city traffic were likely to be falsified out of all recognition, and the authorities near Tyneside had therefore jointly commissioned a 12-month study by the Economist Intelligence Unit of the interrelationships between the various forms of transport, to try to disentangle the complexities relating to what was economic. This was a pioneer study, he said, which he hoped might be developed nationally.
Mr. Burns said that local studies had
shown that, with some difficulty, expected traffic increases for the next 20, years might be coped with, but beyond this the traffic volume looked like being unmanageable and the role of the public transport system would therefore be immensely important. Consequently, their plans were based on providing bus stations for the longer distance buses with easy and attractive routes to the main shops, and on ensuring that local city buses would be able to penetrate even closer to the shops than could the private cars.
In a paper " Traffic Engineering and the Users", Mr. R. M. Robbins, chief commercial officer, London Transport, made the point that the public passenger vehicle was once regarded with suspicion by public authorities because of its size, and consequently its operation was severely controlled, but that size, he said, has now become its advantage. When road space is scarce, the economical user of road space is welcome and as the total number of p.s.v. had not increased in recent years these vehicles had not contributed to the growing sharpness of the problem.
But freight vehicles, he said, had contributed to the growing shortage of road space: the lighter delivery vehicle both in numbers and in demands for loading, unloading, and parking space, and the heavier type through size, slower performance (especially on hills) and the practice of overnight parking away from home.
Road space required for movement was improperly used when it was occupied by any vehicle—goods or passenger —which was not doing its job—either moving, or picking up or setting down a load. Cars and lorries might have to accept the kind of regulation on their use in congested areas which had for years been applied to buses and coaches. All vehicles in motion should be able to put up a satisfactory performance in respect of acceleration and braking, manceuvrability and safety. Also, longdistance freight normally had not the same claim to city road space as commercial delivery vehicles.
The contribution of street lighting to traffic movement and safety was dealt with in a joint paper by Mr. Granville Berry, city engineer and surveyor, Coventry, and Mr. W. Robinson, British Electrical Development Association. In recent years, they said, there had been an upward trend in night travel by commercial and other vehicles, which was helping to spread the traffic load; but as night traffic and accidents increased, the need for some form of lighting became increasingly apparent_ The Road Research Laboratory had established that the improvement of poor street lighting could reduce personal-injury accidents at night by 30 per cent and the cost of bringing all urban thoroughfares up to the necessary lighting standard could be fully met by the consequent reduction in
the bill for road accidents. H,B.C.