Motor madness
Sir; There is nothing like an uraan motorway being planned to pass your door for concentrating the mind on transport policy. As a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in the North East I led the campaign against Socialist 1968 Transport Act, on the grounds that it was a planner's charter imposed from above regardless of what the people on the roads thought about it.
But what can be said about the London motorway box which the Sunday Times think the Government are to force on an unwilling London? If the Government and the Conservatives in the GLC don't watch it they will lose the GLC elections on the grounds of transport policy alone. The motorway box is still uncertain. The scheme affecting Highgate — the proposal to turn the Archway Road into a six-lane carriageway at a cost of £7 million to the taxpayer decided to rus by the DoE — is a reality.
Local amenity groups are pressing in the ARC '73 campaign for a public inquiry as to why the scheme is necessary at all. To funnel lorries and car commuters into a central London which even Mr Heath has noticed is too full of them already Is madness. Surely it should be Conservative policy that as inquiry should be held automatically and it should be for the Ministry to prove the case for a new road rather than for unprepared members of the public to have to challenge the Ministry on its own ground.
A. J. Blackburn 17 Hillside Gardens, London N6
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