Patrick Abercrombie
Greater London Plan 1944
Preamble
Excerpt from: Greater London Plan 1944, by Patrick Abercrombie, His Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1945

 
 

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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.