More Roads and Fewer Houses?
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SUPPORT for the campaign for better roads has come from the West-, 'Muster Bank Review, which declares that economy on the roads is apparently being carried to the point at which the capital invested in the highways up to 1939 is no longer being maintained.
In the past, investment in roads has generally been postponed until labour and resources have become redundant elsewhere. As the long, deep depression of the 193t1s is not likely again to be experienced, future • recessions will probably be arrested long before such road-building projects are put into practice.
Resources must, therefore; be diverted to the roads under conditions of full employment, says the Westminster Bank Review. House building is the main rival to the roads as a claimant upon the limited resources of the con struction trades.
If the Government were to launch a programme for the construction of 200 miles of new road a year, the cost would be about £48m. a year, which would be equal to about 26,700 houses, or 11 per cent. of the ntw houses completed last year. Even if the total were reduced by 26,700, the number of houses built would still be well above the figure for 1951.
By 1465, it is estimated that there Will be 6,111,000 motor vehicles in Britain.