1937-02-23 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 23, 1937.

The Shape Of Roads To Come

A road, in its simplest and pre-Cross Traffic by cise definition, is the easiest, swift- Tunnel or Bridge

est and most direct route between any two places.

roads. Many of these would re- develop into shopping centres or quire double carriageways; in housing estates. I must again em- special cases treble. An absolute phasise the distinction between a minimum width of 120 feet between road and a street. These are the The minimum total width of fences would be required for them. roads. The streets are a very dif- these trunk routes would be 300 They would be designed as far as ferent matter. Arabia's fiercest deserts have feet, so that ample provision could possible to conduct traffic from and their roads, unrecognisable by our be made for pedestrians and lead it into standards, but known to the Be cyclists. The carriageways should They would require the same con- Ground Floors:

the main channels. Shops With Recessed

douin as the best possible-some- have non-skid surfaces which ditions of surface and banked times the only possible--way be would remain light in colour when corners as the first-class highways. tween two water-holes. In such wet, and corners-when corners primitive conditions, by a glorious- were

Inadequate For

Modern Needs

absolutely

unavoidable Roads Must Be Roads-

Streets exist primarily for the service and convenience of the houses, shops, offices, factories, schools and public buildings which line them. Through the streets

ly lucid logic, the better road al- would be banked. ways supersedes the worse, till all The great main routes would run Not Streets but the best possible are eliminated. from the Kent coast to Scotland,

from Scotland to Plymouth and In the construction of these the traffic stream should filter to from Plymouth to London.

Facilities They roads the fullest advantage would its final destination. would then pass within reasonable have to be taken of the principles must be provided for parking or distance of most of the great cen- of the Town and Country Planning waiting, and the convenience of the tres of population.

Act of 1932 and the Restriction of pedestrian must occupy an extra It would be an excellent thing if It is essential, of course, that Ribbon Development Act of 1935. portion of our attention the same simple process could be these super-roads should be as A clear distinction must always be applied to our roads, for, in their direct as possible and-above all-maintained between, a road and a very different circumstances, only that they should have no cross- street. We do not want any of the

a casuist would describe them as

the best possible routes.

It is the peculiar tragedy of our

time that, while we have knowledge -

By Sir Stenson Cooke

Traffic in the streets cannot ex-

pect to go fast Indeed, I cannot imagine any reasonable motorist-- and most motorists are eminently reasonable wanting to speed through the streets when provided with a road system on the lines I

The "famous Chester Rows sug- gest an excellent model for street must design in a shopping and business Trees centre. Modern "rows," with the

and ability to build the almost per- roads to slow down traffic. Where roads I have visualised to be fring- suggest. fect road, our road system as a minor roads joined or left them it ed with dwelling houses, shops, whole is difficult for the traffic it should be possible to drive oblique- factories and so on. carries, by no means swift or direct ly into or out of the main flow of Aesthetic considerations by our standards of speed, and, in traffic. Cross traffic should pro- also be taken into account. addition, sometimes extremely dan- ceed either by bridge or tunnel over should be planted along our roads ground floor of buildings recessed gerous for the traveller.

or, under the main artery.

in such positions that they would 15 or 20 feet to provide a footway As important as these great not have to be disturbed in a few within the building line, and the Far more people lose their lives on our roads in this year of grace trunk roads is the provision than ever lost their purses in the about 20,000 miles of Grade days of Dick Turpin. Our en- gineers have not been allowed to build the Utopian road system mainly because the Government will not pay for it. Our democracy. is suficiently perfect for that to mean we have not the will to create the perfect road system.

Factions That Prevent Progress

No individual, if asked, would object to money being spent on roads. It is not spent because the community allows itself to be divided into factions, forgetting that all are road users with a com- mon interest in a good road. These factions tend to concentrate on blaming each other for road accid- ents, and often forget to blame the true culprit, the insufficient road. Thus money which ought to be spent on roads is diverted to other purposes, and no effective public protest made.

The road system I shall try to describe is, in my opinion, the best possible; the only quality we lack · to create it is the will, for if the will were there the money would be found.

First and foremost, we should build some 6,000 or 7,000 miles of first-class highway. These should have dual carriageways at least. In fact, if the conditions of perfec- tion are to be fulfilled, I ought to ask for treble carriageways in

many cases where the flow of traf- fic alternates.

For instance, Sunday traffic be- tween London and Brighton or Preston and Blackpool in the first part of the day flows mainly coast-

dards and in the second part is

returning. The centre of our three carriageways would be outward bound in the morning and, when the police found the tide of traffic turning, its direction would be re versed" It would also be called into operation when one or the other way needed repa

The dual carriage- way system makes head on collisions, one of the most seri- ous types of acci- dent, virtually im- possible.

Something more effective is needed. than pottering about with speed limits, road signs and po- We lice traps.

something want much heroic.

If road transport is not to be for ever under the reproach that, as an industry, it is responsible for more deaths than any other, our new roads must be of dif- ferent design from the old.

*

It has been driven into the public con- science what the ideal highway must be in modern condi- tions. It must segre- gate the fast traffic from the slow for the acceleration of the one and the pro- tection of the other

of years. Landscapes and fine vistas height of the first floor level de- 2 should be preserved and the road fined to allow the provision of an so made that the traveller has op- upper footway which could be con- portunities to view them..

tinued over side streets, would not Bridges should be of sufficient only be the solution of mest of our width, spanning railway, river or congested street problems, but con- canal with arches to spare, so that venient and attractive architectur- communications at the lower levels ally.

are not interrupted and crossing

the main thoroughfare can be Day Dreaming, Maybe

But Inevitable

avoided.

Bays Where The Traveller Might Pause

There may be some who will re

gard this ideal road system of mine

as a piece of extravagant day- At intervals along the road, bays dreaming. It would be impossible, or halts should be provided. Here they will say, because it would cost the public vehicle may take up or too much, as if the price we are set down passengers, the tired already paying in human life for driver rest or the tourist pause to the present chaos were not enjoy the view. A good road vagant enough. should open up the country for en- joyment as well as provide a route through it.

I believe that a system some thing like mine-I say mine merely for convenience, I claim no patent

When approaching a great town numerous "feeder" roads would rights is not only possible but have to be provided so that trafe essential, and, sooner or later, in- leaving and entering the "through" evitable. route may merge into the general

every

For good roads are flow instead of interrupting it. sense a matter of life and death.

We now come to roads within the Many of the alarming number urban areas. A town must be con-road accidents that are attributed sidered, not only in its function as to "failure of the human element" of population and industry, can, in my opinion, be traced back

a centre a meeting place of in the end to the shortcomings of

but also

Too often it is only an the road. struction to traffic. Towns al-

most invariably owe their origin to Will These Things Come the convergence upon them of roads

and often to their position on a In Our Time?

river crossing. We destroy one of their essential services if we allow Bad surfaces, blind corners, ana-

Slike them to become a liability instead chronisms

of an asset to road comZYTETY tions, bridges, place such a str

the

The well-designed modern town driver that when the moment of should provide not only clear crisis arises his tired nerves fail to routes for "through" traffic but react as swiftly as they should. also a system of communicating The result may be another death roads so that vehicles can exchange on the road.

plicity of rules

king, drivers still

one.

from one road to another. Second and regulations only add to the ner ly, these roads must be designed to vous provide convenient exchange facili ties with other methods of trans port, railways, air lines, and, if the town is a po shipping.

This section of our urban-208- system must be devoted entirely to traffic equirements. The essential Team/musƒƒÐ¶Ð-30512-56ng highways should not be allowed to

The

such.

The

national respon- 28 Ronds Act elcome as a step towards realisation

L

in our time.