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Weave a circle round him thrice
by janus
THE main supporters and opponents have now played out their performance on the three-ring circus which is the framework for the Greater London Council's development plan. There is still a long way to go. The fate of the Roskill Commission's report has shown that. even at the stage when everything seems to be settled apart from the formalities, there can be a sudden change of direction by Government decision.
While the GLC inquiry has been taking place, there has been a substantial 'swing from Conservative to Labour in the local elections. Strictly speaking, this ought to make no difference, in view of the fact that the GLC plan was introduced under a Labour-controlled Council; and during the election the issue of the three ring routes and tributary roads was clearly not regarded by the majority of the electorate as a reason for supporting a particular candidate.
MUCH of the criticism, however, has come from the Labour side. It could increase if it seemed to be moving in the same direction as public opinion. Nobody can be certain what proportion of public opinion was reflected in the objectors who wanted the road proposals in the plan to be maimed or even abandoned. The report of the inquiry ought to show at least to what an extent the arguments have weighed with an impartial tribunal.
The most comprehensive attack at the inquiry came from the London Motorway Action Group and the London Amenity and Transport Association. They concentrated their fire on the two innermost of the proposed motorway rings. According to the two organizations, the GLC planners have wrongly evaluated the benefits and failed to take into account the wider economic and social costs.
As a result, "this great expenditure, proposed for the construction of motorways and associated road development in inner London, while yielding no significant financial return, will also yield on balance no economic and social return whatever, and is likely to do, positive harm to the economic structure of transport and location in London".
ARGUMENT along these lines can hold little comfort for the average motorist or the commercial vehicle operator who finds it more and more difficult to get into London or through London, and is convinced that the mounting congestion makes it a necessity to build roads which will help traffic to flow away from the centre.
' The main alternative put forward by the two organizations is that public transport should be developed in the inner boroughs as well as in the central area, not only for commuters but for off-peak shopping and social and leisure trips. There is no fundamental cleavage of opinion here. The fostering of public transport is part of the overall GLC plan, which recognizes, however, that there is not a complete solution to the problem along these lines. As might be expected, the Royal Institute of British Architects has a different viewpoint from the committed antagonists, although its opposition to the GLC plan was also plainly expressed. The architects had a good deal to say about the aanger of lowering the quality of life. The new roads, they said, would merely increase the severance caused by the Victorian railways instead of providing new links within the urban environment.
ONCE again, emphasis was laid on priority for the improvement of public transport, "since London could never cope with a car saturation situation . .. The private car is becoming increasingly useless in dense urban situations, causing environmental deterioration and high congestion costs."
In spite of this, the architects are not entirely opposed to the motorways, but believe they should be constructed to fit a general plan, including strategic shopping centres, car parks and public transport. Landscape treatment of the new motorways "must not be merely cosmetic". It must be comprehensive and the possibility of separating opposing lanes could mean narrower highways which could more easily be fitted into the surrounding neighbourhood.
The architects are greatly concerned with noise, pollution and the fate of the pedestrian. The GLC proposals are described as "irresponsible" for the lack of adequate legislation to cover the social and economic consequences of blight. Compensation, like the plan itself, must be comprehensive, say the architects. They point out that owner-occupiers can rarely replace their homes with the money received.
Although technically listed as an objector, the British Road Federation, as was to be expected, came out even more strongly than the GLC itself in favour of the development plan. Powerful arguments were put forward and impressively supported. The fears expressed by the architects had already to some extent been answered by the BRF publication Motorways in the Urban Environment, designed to show how, with careful planning, construction of an urban motorway could actually enhance the
style of life of people living on each side of it. The BRF called the authors of the document as witnesses, in addition to Professor Alan Day, London School of Economics, and Professor T. E. H. Williams, Southampton University.
rofessor Day went so far as to say that the GLC, in its own supporting evidence, had actually underplayed the significance and value of the primary road network. "There appears to have been no adequate study of the benefits from operating buses on the urban motorway network," he said.
"The economy of motorway buses, in terms of track space, is perhaps seriously under-estimated." According to Professor Day's calculation, a motorway lane could take 30,000 passengers an hour travelling by bus, compared with a single train track carrying 12,000 passengers an hour.
Professor Williams attacked the policy. of piecemeal or partial implementation of the three-ring plan. "A complete network of primary roads is essential to the efficient circulation and safety of traffic," he said.
E opposed the alternative which leaves disconnected lengths ofhigh standard roads linked with all purpose streets. Within the inner ringway there would be an area of more than 150 square miles for which traffic management techniques alone would be available. In the opinion of Professor Williams, this would be "as illogical in planning as it would be intractable in engineering technology and enforcement".
These and similar considerations lead to one of the basic proposals by the BRF: that the completion of the primary road network, which consists Of the three ringways and associated radial motorways, should be fixed for a date no more than 20 years ahead; and that priority should be given to the inner ringway. This speeding up of the programme might mean, as Professor Williams suggested in his evidence, that the dual carriageways should have three lanes each, although traffic estimated appears to justify the construction of fourlane carriageways on some sections of the network.
OODS vehicle operators may have been relieved to find that in the main they were not the target of attack even by witnesses hostile to the proposed motorway network. The development plan, if and when it is put into effect, will obviously be of substantial benefit to all operators in London and all operators whose activities bring vehicles into the London area.
But the significance of the inquiry spreads beyond the Metropolis. There are other conurbations with traffic problems, although these may not be as serious as the difficulties facing the GLC. Undoubtedly, the planners and the politicians in those conurbations are waiting with interest for the ultimate result of the GLC inquiry. Whichever way London goes will provide a model for the rest of the country.