Sir J. Wolfe Barry made on Wednesday a most interesting
speech on the congestion of London. He believes that the " retardation " of business traffic between East and West, more especially coal traffic, costs the trade interests of London £900,000 a year, the owners of vehicles £1,189,000, and pedestrians £65,000, or a total of i!2,150,000 a year. This he would correct by cutting a single mighty street, 125 ft. wide and 51 miles long, from West to East, and this, with its subsidiary connections, would cost E.6,120 000. This had been ridiculed when originally proposed, but when the loss was fully understood it would be found that the saving fairly repaid the cost. The arterial street is, we fear, a brilliant dream for the present, but if London advances for twenty years as it has done for the past twenty something very like it will have to be constructed. We wonder if it would be quite impossible on the great lines to construct underground lines, confining their use to the conveyance of goods. That would enable us to pass a law which would relieve London more than any new open- ings,—namely, a law insisting that all vehicles in motion shall travel at an equal speed. We always speak of the "stream" of London traffic, but it is the absence of streami- nese which produces the fretting delays that take a year from the life of every active man.
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