Road Facts
Page 23
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MUCH of the work carried out by the Road Research Board is necessarily of a theoretical or a statistical nature and therefore applicable only in retrospect to actual traffic conditions. However, the availability of the results from the Board's experiments and their interpretation of the data they have discovered is invaluable to those rather remote (but very necessary) Government gentlemen, The Planners.
It is in this light that operators should judge Road Research, 1961, published last Friday, which is the Board's latest annual report. A substantial part of the report deals, for instance, with materials and methods of construction of roads—uninteresting to commercial vehicle operators, but vital to their continued efficient running in the future.
A number of points arising from the report are, however, worth examining. For instance, motorway speeds are analysed by classes of vehicles. From November, 1959, to August, 1961, average car speeds fluctuated between 57.9 and 60.4 m.p.h., showing overall a slight downwards tendency that was not significant. On the other hand, average speeds of commercial vehicles fluctuated very little and showed overall a noticeable increase.
Light commercial vehicles' average speeds rose from 47_8 m.p.h. in November, 1959, to 51.8 m.p.h. in February. 1961, and then declined slightly to 51.1 m.p.h. in August of that year. Both medium and heavy commercials showed a steady upwards trend; mediums from 40.3 to 43.2 m.p.h., and heavies from 35.8 to 38.9 m:p.h., both between November, 1959, and August, 1961.
Just what conclusions can be drawn from this is difficult to say, except to remark that it would seem to indicate that the advent of newer, some-what faster, medium and heavy vehicles designed at least to some extent for sustained high-speed work was having an effect on motorway speeds for those classes of vehicles. .
Another point which serves merely to emphasize what everyone knows is a table in the report analysing traffic flows in Great Britain between 1956 and 1961. Public service vehicles, for example, declined by 6 per cent. up to 1960 and then increased by 2 per cent, last year. Is it, perhaps, that congestion is already beginning to bring the bus back into use by some people who had previously forsaken it? Goods vehicles, on the other hand, rose by 29 per cent. in the same period—light vans increasing more than twice as fast as other goods vehicles.
In the same period (here is the root of the congestion problem) private cars increased by 43 per cent. Mopeds and scooters (this is why busmen suffer) rose, respectively, by 46 and 80 per cent.
On weekdays the amount of traffic in Central London rose by 31 per cent_ between 1951 and 1960. In the whole of the country the increase was 49 per cent. between 1953 and 1961. The countrywide traffic build-up is, therefore, rather faster than in Central London, although the difference is lessening.
It is not only the railways that have traffic-concentration trouble. A total of 16 per cent. of the country's vehicle-miles are run on the busiest 1 per cent. of the road-miles, 45 per cent. on the busiest 5 per cent. and 95 per cent. on the busiest 50 per cent. The traffic-density problem seems highlighted by these cold figures.
Because they are coping with it, operators tend to accept present-day traffic congestion. It is a good thing to have the situation brought home once a year in this way. It is a reminder to operators that wheels that do not squeak. . . .