The motorway age (1955–79) - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 84

However planning for future traffic was not just a matter of highway engineering.
The principle of linking traffic with land use needed to be carried through into the
design of access ways and buildings. As a general principle the study team maintained
that the traditional pattern of all-purpose streets needed to be remodelled to create a
new one consisting of a hierarchy of 'distributor roads' enclosing cells in which land
use activities and access arrangements would predominate - so-called 'environmental
areas'. In the centre of cities the density of land use activity was such that extensive
redevelopment would be required, adopting new forms of 'traffic architecture' involving
complex multi-level arrangements.
The report noted that it would not necessarily be appropriate to undertake such
reconstruction in all areas. Indeed it was a matter for debate how far society would
want to go in meeting the financial costs of catering for motorisation and accepting
the physical consequences.
The broad message of our report is that there are absolute limits to the amount of
traffic that can be accepted in towns, depending upon their size and density, but
up to those limits, provided a civilised environment is to be retained or created,
the level of vehicular accessibility a town can have depends on its readiness to
accept and pay for the physical changes required. The choice is society's. But it
will not be sensible, nor indeed for long be possible, for society to go on investing
currently unlimited sums in the purchase and running of motor vehicles without
investing equivalent sums in the proper accommodation of the traffic that results.
(ibid. para 444)
The Traffic in Towns report provided a much needed analysis of the urban traffic
problem of remarkable clarity and comprehensiveness. The amount of public interest
it generated was such that the report to the Government was reprinted in Penguin
paperback form. However it was open to criticism that its estimates of the future traffic
volumes, being derived from the very different circumstances of the United States, had
been exaggerated (Beesley 1964). In any case with increasing car ownership and greater
mobility, it was likely that there would be a natural decentralisation of activities. This
would amount to a restructuring of functions spatially within a broader urban region
rather than simply a physical restructuring within the confines of existing towns.
Seen in the context of today's environmental debates, the report was visionary in
the way it placed environmental conditions at the centre of political choice and in its
concept of 'environmental capacity'. However in policy terms the report was perhaps
naive in imagining that the motoring public would readily accept limits on car use in
order that environmental standards could be achieved. Governments in turn were
always likely to try and avoid the expenditure and upheaval of redevelopment (or
the inconvenience and unpopularity of car restraint). As experience since has shown,
both were prepared to put up with poorer traffic and environmental conditions on
traditional streets instead.
5.6 Urban transport planning
At the time Traffic in Towns was published 'urban transport planning' did not exist.
Rather there were separate activities of highway engineering, traffic management,
town planning and public transport operation. Parking control was in its infancy. Over
the next ten years there was growing recognition that each of these had a contribution