Prompt Action by the Road Board.
Page 8
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Immediate Financial Help for Bona-fide Improvements to Suit Motorbus Traffic. Text of the Road Board's Conditions.
The following is the text of the Road Board's conditions for grants or loans to Borough or Urban Councils in Greater London. We dealt with this editorially, in our issue of the 28th November, in the course of an article under the title of " The Amenableness of the Road Board." Our plea that local authorities should be helped forthwith to tackle the problem of stronger roads has not been disregarded.
The Circular.i
(1) They do not encourage proposals relating to the widening of streets in fully built areas which are crowded and congested mainly with local traffic, as they do not consider that sueh works are fairly within the scope of the Road Improvement Fund.
(2) They will give special consideration to proposals for the reconstruction of road crusts, especially in cases where these require immediate reconstruction owing to injury caused by motor omnibuses and heavy motors. But they are of opinion that grants should not be sought from them for the more expensive forms of road construction for which it is customary to borrow the initial cost on long-term loans. The money available for grants can, they suggest, be spent more usefully and more beneficially in the interest of existing ratepayers on reconstruction work, for which there is an immediate need, but for which the highway authority cannot get sanction to borrow for a term which would spread the initial cost over a large number of years.
(3) In selecting the roads the reconstruction of which they will assist they will give prior consideration to those roads which form part of important through routes, carrying a considerable volume of long distance traffic, and also those roads which, although not strong enough for the purpose, arc now being used for regular motor-omnibus services. (4) They will favourably consider proposals which will facilitate the execution of town planning schemes, so far as these contain provision for the improvement of through road communications.
(5) They will give special consideration to proposals for the acquisition of vacant land required, or likely to be required, for widenings of important roads in cases where it can be shown that the prospect of building is imminent.
(6) Having regard to the amount available for grants and the amount for which applications are likely to be made by highway authorities on which the burden of road expenditure is exceptionally heavy in relation to assessable value, the grants will probably, in most eases, range from 10 to 50 per cent, of the cost of works proposed.
(7) The. works selected for applications to the Board should not include any that have been commenced, or for which financial provision has been made.
The aggregate amount which the Board is prepared to treat as available at the present time for grants or short loans to highway authorities in the Metropolitan Police area is 2250,000.
Applications should be accompanied by—
(1) Statistics of the expenditure of the authority on the maintenance and improvement of roads and bridges during the past ten years on form marked "A."
(2) A map of the district marked to show—
(1) Roads on which there is a regular service of motor omnibuses.
(2) The road or roads in respect of which an application for a grant or a short-term loan is made.
(3) Statistics of traffic taken for seven consecutive days between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
(4) A brief description of the proposed work of road improvement, accompanied where necessary by plans and estimates, Form No. 11 should be used, where applicable, in the case of applications for grants to road-crust improvement work.