Discussion. The Planning of Ring Roads, With Special Reference to London.

Abstract

DiscussionThe Chairman remarked that in nearly all plans of towns which had been made the planners had included a ring road, because it had been fashionable to do SO, but the Chairman believed that in many smaller towns a ring road would be more trouble than it was worth, because it would take traffic away from what corresponded roughly to a straight line and make it go in a circle. The problem in relation t o London was peculiar to London. He had no doubt that the discussion would clarify their ideas on whether or not a ring road was wanted. The Paper was a highly scientific analysis of the problem, and the fact that practising engineers could deal with a matter of that kind on a scientific tmis was a great testimony to engineers in general and to the Author in particular. Dr W. H. Glanville (Director of Road Research, D.S.I.R.) said that the Paper wasvery comprehensive and gave a great deal of interesting historical information. The Author indicated that most American cities, apart from Washington, had a rectangular street pattern and that ring roads were inapplicable, but Dr Glanville wondered how true that was. He felt from his own experience in America that the Americans were tending to construct, and had in fact constructed, a number of ring roads in different cities and that those which had been constructed had been found to be extremely valuable. The American practice was to provide roads right through the centre of the city and the urban area which could be looked on as radiating roads in one sense, and in some cases t o provide inner ring roads as well. All those were "free" ways, i.e., motorways with intersections a t different levels from the roads which they crossed. It seemed that that was a principle which must be accepted in future for all large-town development if the full advantages offered by motor transport were to be obtained, because the time saved and the convenience of travel were much greater than with intersections at grade. In England there had been almost no experience of that, and SO the public did not realize the great advantages given by intersections which were free from traffic flowing across them. He hoped that the Author's obvious desire t o see a ring road built on such principles would be fulfilled.The Author had indicated some of the obstacles in the way, not the least of which seemed to be that the planners had felt that proposals involving such expenditure would not be acceptable to the Government. That attitude had important repercussions which it was necessary to consider. Moreover, the historical part of the Paper seemed to show that some of the planners had regarded traffic needs as a secondary matter. That was an extraordinary attitude to adopt, and any engineer would feel, with the Author, that such an approach lacked realism.Another extraordinary fact brought out in the Paper was the foresight shown by the builder of the Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton, in his proposal for a covered arcade. It would have been a great blessing if some arcades of that kind had been cons...