Suburban Service Problems
Page 59
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Penetration of Outside Services into Urban Areas Presents Difficulties for Municipalities in all Countries THE penetration of suburban services into urban transport systems is a problem which confronts municipal authorities in all countries. At the instance of the board of management of the International Union of Public Transport, M. Giu.pponi and M. Paribeni made an analysis of it as it concerns Europe.
It was extremely rare, they said, for suburban services to cease at the first point at which they met urban services. In general; suburban services camprised extensions of urban lines with fixed installations maintained by buses or trolleybuses. r Even large towns formed no exception to this general rule, but adjacent to the terminal points of the suburban services there were important systems of communication radiating in every direction through the towns. Such systems might be surface or underground transport, or both.
It had been established that, with few exceptions, in towns with a population of fewer than 700,000, central termini were to be preferred, whereas the larger towns insisted upon the termini being on the outskirts of the urban zone.
Conversely, there were large cities, such as Naples. Rotterdam and Glasgow, which insisted upon having a central terminus. Manchester, where the railway stations were closely grouped in the centre of the town, and Cologne, which was divided into two sections by the Rhine, also had a central terminus.
Problem Resolved
The problem of penetration into 'towns already provided with underground services had been definitely resolved. In the case of small towns penetration did not give rise to any problem.
In other towns, however, the question was acute, because no attempt had been made, until recent years, to provide a real solution of it.
Penetration by suburban services was only a subsidiary part of the general traffic problem, said the authors.