STRUCTURE OF THE PLAN:
COMMUNICATIONS
Transport follows closely upon
the zoning
pattern: it also grows naturally and imperceptibly out of the system
devised
for the inner core in the County of London Plan. But in the main,
regional
transport does not deal with such highly, concentrated, acute and
controversial
problems of urban traffic congestion: although the worst social feature
- straphanging at peak hours - penetrates far into the outer region.
Perhaps
it may be said that the separation of long distance from local road
traffic
can be more clearly defined and more easily realised than in the
closely
built centre: indeed, many attempts have already been made by means of
new radial avenues, circular roads and by-passes to individual places:
but owing to a lack of logic in achieving the object, for which many
different
agencies are blamed, only a partial success in the avoidance of
accidents
and the increase of speed has resulted. It is doubtless better to take
the Watford By-Pass than to pass through the centre of the town, and to
travel along the new Cambridge Road than by the old ribboning
communities
which are almost continuous from Tottenham to Ware. But we aim at
something
better still.
As regards Air Transport, only a
tentative
system for London as a whole is now possible: it was decided, on the
best
obtainable advice, that except for helicopters or aircraft with similar
methods of landing, air transport must be kept outside the London
County
area: but in the air things move more quickly than anywhere else. It
cannot
be considered that anything like finality has been reached in the
systematic
provision of aerial transport.
The approach to the road plan for
the
Region has been different from that of Sir Charles Bressey in his
Highway
Survey. There, it will be remembered, he prepared a map showing a
system
of main roads of all sorts: he then suggested that certain of these
might
be picked out and treated as Motorways. We have followed more closely
upon
the County of London Plan which distinguished between an extremely
simplified
system of “arterial roads” and all others: these arterial roads
consisted
of one ring, ten radials and a central cross (for the most part in
tunnel).
We have taken these ten radials and projected an entirely new system of
“express arterial roads” (or one-purpose motorways ), including a new
outer
ring (called the D Ring) placed on the inner edge of the Green Belt,
that
is on the verge of the built-up area of London. The radials become
national
routes and have been carried to their logical conclusions, largely
based
upon the report submitted to the Minister of Transport by the County
Surveyors
Society in 1938. Certain other main roads become regional routes of
sub-arterial
all-purpose character. The Great West Road, the Cambridge Road, the
Barnet
and Watford By-Passes, the Eastern and Western Avenues and the Kingston
By-Pass would continue to function in this regional manner and would
continue
to carry an enormous volume of traffic engendered by the business and
social
affairs of a community of ten million inhabitants. They should prove
adequate
for that purpose if they are carefully preserved from further frontage
development, if their connections with other roads are kept
sufficiently
wide apart, and where possible furnished with more up-to-date
intersections
(especially where a “free-flow” of traffic is required in one
direction).
A number of additional by-passes will be required, possibly more of an
internal (in order to relieve the shopping precinct-street of through
traffic)
than of an external type (to relieve the town of the passing traffic
altogether).
Like everything else in this Plan,
there
is a graded order of priority for the new express arterial road: there
would be no interruption of traffic in any direction in the present
system
of main roads, until one by one the express arterial roads were
completed,
to relieve the former of their high-speed and distance traffic. There
is
something extremely simple about this proposal, consisting as it does
of
ten radials and two rings, the inner (B Ring) within the L.C.C.
boundary,
the outer (D Ring) just outside the built-up area. Underneath, as it
were,
is the maze of London’s main roads, radials, diagonals, and three
rings,
the North and South Orbital (E Ring), the North and South Circular (C
Ring)
and the A Ring. There will be less need for expensive widenings of many
of the existing roads; no money for this purpose should be diverted
from
the system of express arterial roads.
It is believed that these new
express
arterial roads will prove less costly to construct than widening of
existing
roads, which at best will produce a patchwork result: that the saving
in
transport costs will be enormous: that if carried out with real
co-operative
agricultural planning, the damage to farming can be minimised; and that
as regards rural amenities, these new roads can be made real works of
landscape
art.
The railways in the London
Region are the
logical extension of their central terminations. In the County of
London
Plan a number of suggestions giving rise to far-reaching implications
were
put forward in a somewhat more tentative form than the road proposals;
and a request was made for a special body to be set up to examine them.
The position in the Region is similar.
One of the chief suggestions
affecting
the main trunk lines, common to both plans, is the change-over to
electric
traction at points before the built-up area is reached; these points
are
indicated and it is anticipated that they will become local
distributing
centres for traffic which does not need to enter London proper. For
this
purpose and for other reasons, in some cases connected with sites for
satellites,
several of the connecting links which occur in the region and which at
present are not much used, might be improved. We have placed our new
satellites
in such a way that long lengths of new railway are not required; but
something
will be necessary for the major aerodrome.
As regards local passenger
transport,
the fundamental changes proposed in the relation between homes and work
must be taken into consideration. Extensions of suburban lines and
tubes,
which may have been begun or for which parliamentary powers have been
obtained,
may no longer be required, and congested lines, it is hoped, may be
relieved.
A review of the whole passenger transport system will be necessary , if
the proposals for the redistribution of the population made in this
Plan
take effect.
In making detailed studies of
individual
towns many interesting and curious conditions are found to exist,
largely
owing to the comparatively recent amalgamation of many 1ines and the
few
readjustments that it has been possible to make. The large number of
stations
in some places (e.g., 14 in Croydon); the existence of more than one
minor
terminal, as well as a main through line, in others; are examples of
what
is meant. This Plan is not able to consider these internal problems of
communities in detail, but there does appear to be a need for a
detailed
overhaul in order that the suburban railway system may be as efficient
as the road system proposed.
The study of facilities for goods
and
markets is another aspect of general railways affairs which might be
dealt
with by some joint committee representing the four Companies and
forming
the railway section of a General Transport Board.
The location of aerodromes has
been carefully
considered in relation to railway connection. Here is an opportunity
from
the start to plan a system of new communications adequately related to
the older forms of road and rail transport.
From these observations upon
railways,
it will be seen that in the first instance we recommend that actual
proposals
should be examined by the special body asked for by the County of
London
Plan. But the railways, both main lines and tubes, should participate
in
a permanent Transport Board which would work in close co-operation with
the Regional Planning Board proposed in Chapter 14.
It is interesting and fitting -
and indeed
perhaps inevitable - that the subject of Air Transport, as devised for
a Capital City (perhaps one of the first planned under the new
conditions
revealed during this war), brings Planning at one bound into the
international
sphere. The chief airport for London is not regional or national, but
hemispheric
in its scale. The hierarchy will, therefore, for once be complete: it
will
range from hemispheric, continental, national, regional to local scale.
An attempt has been made to plan this completely new system of airports
and to work out the inter-relation of use in the five scales of traffic
distance, involving possibly the use of taxiplanes from aerodrome to
aerodrome.
But our principal care has been to see that they are related to the
rail
and road system. Here, of course, the express arterial road system will
be of first importance, giving quick access to the centre of London by
the radials, and connecting one aerodrome with another by the ring.
Particular attention has been
given, in
co-operation with the Director of Civil Aviation, to the planning of
the
surroundings of the principal airport for a long term policy.
It should be unnecessary to say
that this
scheme for transport in all its forms has been closely devised to work
together, not as an antagonistic system, but complementary, following
the
lead set by the London Passenger Transport Board. It has also been
planned
in direct connection with the existing communities and with proposals
for
development or the continuance of the status quo. No civic or social
centres
are cut through or across, streets which in old days could serve the
dual
purpose of traffic and shopping have been sharply differentiated, new
railways
or stations are not proposed for areas which it is not intended to
develop
for building; at the same time the needs of marketing produce will be
met.
The proposed regrouping of the
population
and industry is intended to reduce, as much as possible, time and money
spent in diurnal travelling, although it is recognised that so long as
man is free to choose his home and occupation, and so long as
individual
members of families develop different aptitudes it will be impossible
to
prevent, in a great centre of population, a considerable amount of
criss-cross
journeys.