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£25,000 Saving from Each Mile of Motorway

9th December 1955
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Page 51, 9th December 1955 — £25,000 Saving from Each Mile of Motorway
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Mr. Brunner's Contribution to Important Planning Conference : Basic Approach to Transport Problem by Speakers EVERY mile of motorway built in Britain could save up to £25,000 a year in transport costs, said Mr. C. T. Brunner.; the leading road economist, in London list week. He was addressing the national conference of the Town and Country Planning

Association.

Modernization, of the roads had not matched the growth in the use of .road transport. The Government had failed to appreciate the economies of

twentieth-century developments, • to plan ahead and to translate plans into action.

"Today we arc spending` on the roads only approximately half, in actual purchase value, of what vim were spending in 1939, despite trade and industry's greater need for a modern road system," said Mr, Brunner. " Furthermore, far larger taxes are levied on road transport--more than £400m. in the current year, compared with less than £100m. in 1939."

' Lack of money was given as the reason why important highway projects could not be undertaken---" an excuse hardly consistent" with the receipts of taxation and the expenditure of o-nly

£40m. a year on roads. . •

Meagre Programme 'the rate of progress even with the .present meagre road programme could not be considered • satisfactOry. Fiftythree miles of rnotaiway were to be built from near St. Albans to Rugby and might he finished in 1959, a rate of . construction of lt Miles a month. Yet, during the war, in airfield Construction, the equivalent of 3,000 miles of dualcarriageway road was completed in three years.

There was cause for astonishment that the programme omitted mention of a South Wales motorway. This would cost 137.4m., including £10.6m. for the Severn Bridge. The savings in transport, operating costs which the motorway would yield would be as high as Eztm. annually, or more than 10 per cent. of the capital expenditure. • Modern industry had come to depend more and more upon efficient highways. Whereas rail communications tended to exert a centripetal influence on the pattern of industry, the ideal of modern planning was to distribute the factors of production and ancillary services. Modern industrial development had : necessarily been built up with increasing reliance upon the flexibility of road transport.

Efficient roads Jed to cheaper transport, and thuscheaper gOodS to sell -at home and abroad: Mr. Brunner thought it vital that the financing Of

future road works should be through a national highway authority, providing for continuity of finance, the absence of which had been at the root of the failure to push through a modern road programme.

The authority would have power to raise loans and co-ordinate the work of many local authorities. With the constructional part of the defence programme nearing completion, the civil engineering industry was fully prepared for arty major task of road building.

A year or two ago, alleged shortages of materials were often given as a reason for deferring the start of road works. That particular objection no longer applied, and the present cloud on the horizon was the allegedly inflationary e if ects of undertaking capital expenditure today which could be put off until tomorrow. said Mr. B run ner.

He suggested the building of " service enclaves " at 50-mile intervals on motorways. These would provide facilities for supplying vehicles with fuel and so on, and have restaurants,

Maj.-Gen. G. N. Russell, general manager of British Road Services, opened the discussion on Mr. Brunner's paper. He stressed the need for the alleviation of city congestion, which, he said, was more important than improving long-distance links. It might be necessary to regulate the use of private cars in towns.

Mr. F. J. Osborn, chairman, said that it had been taken for granted for too long that people were right in their choice of where to live and work, and that the core to transport problems was : to make wider communications. The danger of specialized thinking was that better . communications were thought necessary between places where people : ought not to live and where they ought not to work. Aid. W. G. Fiske, chairman of London County Council limising committee, in his paper entitled "London in Relation to the ,Rest of the Country," described the Ministry of Transport as by common consent the most ineffective of all Government Departments, and a Ministry which seems quite unable to make up its mind on the long-term nature of road planning in built-up areas."

"When one realizes that the widening of tilt Strand was first started in 1.836 and is not finished in 1955, it can readily be seen that a Ministry which works on an annual budget, and has until recent months refused to commit itself beyond any one year, is making this problem of planning and the necessary property acquisition one of a I in o s t impossible difficulty," he asserted.

We are beginning to see what believe is the breakdown of the system of traffic lights," warned Aid. Fiske. Traffic might have to be compulsorily controlled, heavy lorries being banned from certain routes, for example. It had been found in one town, around which 'a costly by-pass had been built, that drivers continued to use the old through road because all the transport cafes were located on it.

A radical solution of London's traffic problems, involving viaducts, cuttings, tunnels and fly-over crossings, would be astronomically expensive, " somewhat terrifying," and was a conception which would irreparably alter the character and charm of London.

However, it was apparent that the continued prosperity of the country might well be linked with the necessity of having a concentrated commercial and administrative centre, so that it might not be a good idea to disperse the working population over a wide area.

Approach Too Narrow Any solution of London's traffic problems must rely upon close co-operation between t h e factions involved. These were sometimes organized into "very narrow sectional interests." The motoring associations refused to look at anything which harmed the motorist, and the hauliers likewise. It was an enormous waste of effort that many bodies with much in common should be pursuing narrow sectional needs, thought Ald. Fiske.

Opening the conference, Mr. John Profurno, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, admitted that r(:6.d development had lagged behind the growth of traffic, but explained that the procedure involved in co-ordinating plans and meeting the rights of individuals was bound to take time.

Whatever planners might decide, people collectively tended to go their own way. he said. Suppose, he asked. more and more people bought cars and used them to go to work. Apart from the effect on road congestion and the parking problem, how would the public transport services fare?


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