ROSCO slates road spending
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• "Notwithstanding the strident warnings of the last decade from so many quarters, it is evident that Government has failed to provide adequately for the traffic situation which it was forecast would overtake us", claims the Road Operators Safety Council.
This comment is made in the annual report of the Council for 1969, in which it recalls that 10 years ago it advocated the only solution as traffic conditions approached the impossible. This was to the effect that a pattern would develop of large car parks sited on city perimeters near the end of Motorways, with journeys into the city centre completed by public transport.
The Council states that it would like to see widespread experiments on these lines, although it admits that with holiday traffic such as in the South West, such forms of control may not be possible.
ROSCO warns that the next year or two will demonstrate to what extent this country did, in fact, learn from the lesson of America. It suggests that although Government takes £1560 million a year from road users, too little is spent on the repair and maintenance of existing roads and on the provision of the all important new roads—"certainly too little to meet the crisis looming".
"As we near the time of paralysis there will be recriminations but the charge levelled will be that we did not learn the lessons of America and that Government spent much too little and too late to cope with the clear prophecies and predictions which were made", states the Council.
Road Operators' Safety Council, Annual Report 1969. Brettenham House, Lancaster Place, WC2.