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He relates the
spontaneous chaos of traffic and congestion to the collapse of planning and the abandonment of comprehensive development in our cities. The motor manufacturers, driven by the search for profits, call for more roads, but
the problem cannot be solved within the competitive framework of a free enterprise economy.
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The Profits-Jam
The reason why the volume of traffic increases more
slowly than the number of vehicles registered, and
congestion more rapidly, is of course the inadequacy of
the entire road system, which has never developed at a
rate commensurate with the growth of the motor
industry. There is evidence to show that, if the road
system was considerably improved and if vehicles could
move freely, traffic would increase more rapidly than
the number of vehicles; partly because the building of
new roads exclusively for motor vehicles generates new
traffic, and partly because the degree of congestion has
for long been so serious that it deters many motorists
from using their cars as much as they would like to.
In London, for example, only 7 per cent of the population working in the centre travel to work by car. The rest
travels by public transport. But if there was no congestion on the roads, and if there were enough parking
places at the other end, as many as 80 or 90 per cent
might go to work by private car.
Only six years ago Britains motor industry produced
a million vehicles a year. Last year, production rose to
a million and a half. By 196263, when the 160 million
expansion programmes of the five major manufacturers
(BMC, Ford, Rootes, General Motors (Vauxhall) and
Standard-Triumph) have been completed, capacity will
have risen to three million, and Britain will have in
proportion to its population a much larger motor
industry than the United States. This is a staggering
prospect, even if one assumes that exports might rise
from 600,000 to a million or even a million and a half
vehicles a year. But this is not the end. The manufacturers investment is exceeded by the parallel
investment in steel, tyres, parts and accessories, and the
expansion programmes recently announced are only the
first instalment of an even bigger programme, whose size
is as yet undisclosed. There is no knowing whether it
will be possible to sell three million vehicles at home and
abroad in 1963, and each of the big five is in fact
hoping to increase its share of the market at the
expense of the other four. But the motor industry is so
highly automated today that profits can only be made
on the basis of a large output. If demand should fall
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Road-Relief?
But of course the effect of building such a system
would be to aggravate intensely the existing traffic
congestion in towns and cities. A motorway system
would by-pass all towns and cities, but it is a fallacy to
suppose that a by-pass puts an end to the traffic problem.
The larger the town, the smaller the proportion of
traffic that can be diverted by a by-pass. In this country
so few surveys have been made of the origin and
destination of traffic, that all the plans for ring roads
and by-passes are based on hunches, not on an analysis
of the facts. In the United States it is calculated that,
whereas in a town of less then 5,000 inhabitants nearly
60 per cent of the approaching traffic has no business
there, this figure falls to 18 per cent in cities between
50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants and to 8 per cent in
cities between 500,000 and one million inhabitants.
There is a crying need for by-passes and for motor
roads that will divert through traffic from small villages
and towns, but it is a hoary fallacy to suppose that
by-passes or ring roads will make much difference to
traffic congestion in larger towns or cities.
In the case of London, a survey made in 1948 showed
that 85 per cent of the traffic entering a circle drawn
2 miles from Charing Cross will stop inside it. The
ring roads proposed in various London road plans
would divert relatively little traffic from the centre, and
by improving access to the centre (particularly if built
in conjunction with motor roads radiating from London
to the provincial centres) they would greatly aggravate
traffic congestion. The basic fact that has to be grasped
is that 80 per cent of all traffic originates in the larger
towns and cities. The more elaborate the system of
national motorways, by-passes and ring roads, the
worse the congestion will become within the existing
streets to which, in the end, the traffic has to make its
way to reach its destination.
So far as is known, the only scientific projections of
future traffic movements in this country have been made
in the preparation of the plan for the new town of
Cumbernauld in Scotland. The calculations prove
conclusively that even within a small town of 70,000
inhabitants, from which all through traffic will be
diverted by double-track arterial roads circumventing
the town, immense volumes of traffic will still be
generated. Traffic flows were calculated in detail for
every stretch of road and every intersection on the towns
hypothetical road plan, on the assumption that there
would be 0.7 cars per family in 15 years time, and that
55 per cent of the working population would travel to
Motorists Forever
Victor Gruen, an American architect and planner,
calculated recently that if the shaky public transport
system in New York were bankrupted (as it may well
be) and forced out of business (which is most unlikely),
and if all the workers in New York City had to travel
by private car, it would be necessary to demolish every
building in downtown Manhattan, build nine levels of
transportation space, and then construct new offices
and other buildings on top.
Victor Gruen also prepared, in 1957, a plan for
Fort Worth, a city of 1,200,000 inhabitants in Texas.
This was the first plan for any American city designed
completely to solve the traffic problem in the downtown
business area. He proposed to ring the centre with an
elaborate motor road, and to turn the entire central area
(about the size of the area bounded by Oxford Street,
Park Lane, Piccadilly and Regent Street) into a
pedestrian precinct. Six garages each for 10,000 cars
would adjoin the ring road, and loop roads for buses
would penetrate some distance into the pedestrian
precinct. Underground roads, excavated beneath the
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Living Suburbs
The situation is similar in other large cities. To solve
this problem is anything but easy, and it must take time.
But there are one or two examples of what planning can
do. The new housing estate to be built by the City of
London Corporation in the Barbican is not only the
most bold and imaginative solution of the traffic
problem (over an area of 65 acres vehicles and
pedestrians are to be completely separated on different
levels) but it will house 10,000 people in the City. The
demand for flats in central London proves that, while
many families want gardens, many others want the
convenience of a central location near their work and
the amenities of a big city. The rents, however, are far
beyond the level that working-class families can pay,
because land values are so high. Until urban land is in
public ownership, it will not be possible to determine
the use of land solely by town planning criteria, and
until this is done it is going to be uphill work trying to
reduce the rush hour flood by locating workplaces and
homes nearer to each other.
A possible technical solution has been brilliantly
demonstrated by the architects Gregory-Jones, Shankland, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in a scheme to
redevelop the Middlesex suburb of Boston Manor.
This is today a dreary, low-density dormitory suburb
thrown up near the Boston Manor station on the
Central Line. The architects scheme for a living
suburb, or as others have called it a new town in the
city, was to bridge over the large railway sidings and
the station, and on top of it to build a new regional
centre, with offices, flats, shops, houses, facilities for
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Spontaneous Chaos?
The answer can only be found by redeveloping very
large areas20, 30, 40 acres or moreat a time,
because it is extraordinarily difficult to introduce such
solutions as upper level walkways into existing streets,
when small sites are being developed in isolation. The
resources being squandered in each of the big cities
today on piecemeal office building could, if concentrated
on a single comprehensive development area, bring
about a dramatic transformation in a very short time.
But this is inconceivable within present limitations of
legislation, finance, and land ownershipnot to speak
of the limited horizons within which planning is conceived today.
The main conclusion to be drawn from this survey is
that the traffic problem is not, as the Labour spokesmen
in the House of Commons like to say, a non-party
issue. It is not a problem to be solved merely by thinking
up the brightest technical ideas, the latest in pink or
tartan zones. The traffic problem is rooted in capitalist
society itself, in national economic anarchy, in the
manufacturers pursuit of profit, in the false gods of
status and prestige, in the private ownership of land
and the acquisitiveness of landowners and speculators.
It is a symptom of a disease that is incurable without a
radical operation.
This article does not attempt to draw up a blueprint
for the solution to the traffic problem: but it is worth
setting down some general principles which should
govern a socialist approach to the problem:
1. Transport is a service. New forms of transport
require new planning and architectural solutions, but
the primary aim is to create conditions for a fully
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