Traffic Report Startles Ministers
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
A DRAMATIC and far-reaching study, r-kof the future impact of traffic in Brita:n's towns and cities has just been received b) the Minister of Transport.
It is the first draft report of the expert committee set up nearly two years ago under Mr. Colin Buchanan. one of Europe's leading planning and engineering experts, who was drafted into the Ministry to make the study.
The report, which looks at•the urban traffic problem of the 1980s. and the measures needed to cope with it, has startled those Ministers who have seen it with its intense and dramatic warnings. l.ocal authorities, ,planning specialists. traffic experts and trade and industry will all need to heed its findings' when the report is published in the autumn.
Mr. Buchanan'was asked to study the ifeveloping problems of roads and traffic in urban areas, and .their probable influence on the urban environment. He was particularly urged to study the long-term demand for motor transport in towns, and the measures required to cope with it.
In this aspect of the study, he was-also asked to match the needs of transport with the other needs of towns.
The vast arid accelerating growth of road traffic and its shatter:lig effect on ordinary life is one of the major problems facing Britain in the next 20 years. If no steps are taken to plan for it. life in our major cities cPuld easily break down.