How to Speed Up Town Traffic
Page 70
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A LTHOUGH the British contributions 1-1to the "Town Roads for Today and Tomorrow" exhibition are concerned rather with tomorrow than today, there is much to be seen of interest to the planner, the engineer and road user. The exhibition, at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, London, S.W.1, is sponsored by the British Road Federation and remains open until 6 p.m. tomorrow.
Perhaps the most impressive feature of the Continental and American exhibits is the evident boldness with which the problem of speeding trans-urban movement has been tackled. There are photographs, plans and models of recent development schemes in Germany, France, Spain, Holland, Italy, Sweden, the United States and half a dozen other countries.
In no large city has the solution been easy or inexpensive. In some, the devastation left by war (as in Hamburg. Dfisseldorf and Hanover) has aided the town planners to start with almost a clean sheet. In others, the lines of existing. roads, railways or canals have been used to provide radial and ring roads. Overand under-passes, cloverleaf junctions and throughways capable D28 of carrying up to a dozen streams of traffic have been built to prevent paralysis.
In Britain the solution of the problem appears to lie in the direction of duplicated roads, one above the other, thus saving the enormous cost of compulsory land acquisition. The Hammersmith fly
over, which forms part of the Cromwell Road extension scheme, is an excellent example of this form of construction.
The roadway takes two lines of traffic in each direction, on a cantilever construction spreading from a central spine between the approach ramps. The spine itself is carried on pre-stressed concrete columns, 140 ft. apart. Electrically heated cables embedded in the approach ramps will prevent icing.