MOTOR TRANSPORT IN NOTTINGHAM.
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The Increasing Expansion of this Midland Centre. How Local Requirements are Met by Commercial Vehicles'.
LTHOUGH THE TIME which has ti elapsed since the newly-formed branch of the Comnnmeial Motor Deers Association was launched at Nottingham, has not been sufficiently long to permit of a great deal being •cffected, there is already evidence forthcoming of very practical interest in relation.. to a project which is designeditenpromote closer cooperation between the various interests affected. The succeseeof !the inauguration has been largelytclue to the visit of the secretary of the national organization, who, as at the similar preliminary meeting held at Birmingham, found that conditions in the capital of the lace industry were entirely favourable to the success of the scheme. Taking within the latitude of its arrangements five important county areas, the East Midlands auxiliary will find plentiful scope for its activities in Notts, Warwickshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Northants, an expansive territory embracing widely varying considerations in relation to the motor industry. Having regard to what has already followed from Captain Bristow's elucidation, of the aims.of the Association, it seems little short of surprising that there had teen .nothing previously attempted in the districts of which Not tingham is the convenient geographical centre, to bring about a correlation of fames. Happily the relations between county authorities and the representative users of the reads have been hitherto for the greater part of an entirely eatiefactory character, • but occasions must of necessity arise upon which concerted action may be of vital value and in this connection the presence at the recent Nottingham gathering of Mr. Metcalf; the chairman of the district section of the Road Board, was welcomed as an evidence of something more than e formal official recognition of the scheme, • MO
Whilst conditions are not entirely peculiar in that respect to the staple trades of Nottingham and Leicester, as represented by lace and hosiery, there are very pressing reasons which of recent years have Tendered the motor vehicle problem of especial significance to those towns, the principal of these being naturally that the outlying places of production are indispensable to the larger commercial centres. There is a network of small townships and villages around both Nottingham and Leicester which contribute to the indispensable volume of production and whether it be of lace and hosiery the products of machines in the surrounding places must be brought rapidly into the main centres for finishing or dyeing purposes with the Testa that fleets of excellently equipped cone treseciaI vans have been brought into oafs
fence of late years to .keep pace with ever exigent demands. Nottingham and Leicester motor agents have not been slow to avail themselves of the op, pereunities which have been thus
afforded, the effect being evidenced by busy scenes in the Nottingham lace market as elsewhere, while more easily adaptable mechanically-propelled appliances have largely taken the place of slow horse traction. Nor has the develnprrient by any means be.ee limited to those respime. sible for the control of large.manufacturing concerns. Municipal alithoritic.e have been long since aroused also to the importance of the changes involved, and although the ihstallation has yet been entirely incommensurate with the requirements of the city, it is an evidence of the euickly altering times that the Nottingham Corporatem is now aeding to its equipment of powerfully-built motor fire eitgines, an equally indispensable type of traction -represented by appliances for road sweep
ing, street watering and collection. of house refuse to take the place of lumbering vehicles, which were not only an eyesore but a hindrance to general traffic.
The means as represented by main arteries of traffic are ample, for whilst as in many older towns which have long outgrown their original plane, Nottingham's old-fashioned streets in some of the business quarters are at times undesirably congested, its boulevards are without a parallel in Midland towns. Mainly through the perspicacity of the former town clerk, who came to the city when Nottingham's municipal area was of very restricted proportions, a plan was conceived, and in its chief essentials carried out for the creation of a circle of boulevards encompassing the town. The Castle and Gregory boulevards which form links in the chain might not be
deemed unworthy of many firet-class Continental towns, and herein there is ample scope for motor vehicles of all kinds. Attempts to serve for passengerpurposes the innumerable places lying, within convenient proximity to Notting-, ham have not. been limited either to the eiterteion of diePrict tramway systems (in which the company of which Lard ailstem is the head has found a remunerative field of investment in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) a regular system of meter vehicles having been maintained, previous to the war, between the city and the rapidly .advancing townships in the Newark and Leon valleys. From places as far afield as Doncaster and Chesterfield the incursion of motor charsel-ba_nes for football and entertainment purposes had been witnessed on Saturdays, and although all this has had necessarily to be given -up under restrictive conditions, the elements for vast expansion may be easily utilizable with the return of normal times.