ROADS AND MOTORS.
11TH:N the Chancellor of the Exchequer first introduced is proposals to devote a certain sum of money, obtained from the taxes on motor-cars and petrol, to the improvement of the roads, there were a good many interest- ing suggestions made to him, and one of the best was pat forward by a correspondent of the Times. Roughly speaking, the Times correspondent calculated that each year there would be about £500,000 to be spent on road improvement, and he proposed that half of that sum should be devoted to making existing roads dustless, and that the other half should be used for alterations and additions. To control this expendi- ture he imagined a Board of seven constituted thus: (1) a representative of the Treasury; (2) a representative of the Local Government Board; (3) a member of the County Councils Association, to represent local authorities ; (4) a representative of owners of motor-cars used for commerce; (5 and 6) representatives of the great body of private owners of motor-cars, who will contribute the bulk of. income. As chairman the Times correspondent suggested a civil engineer of distinction, and the Spectator, agreeing generally -with the Times correspondent's proposals, suggested that an eighth member might be added to the Board nominated by the National Trust, the duty of the National Trust representative being to see that, except where imperatively necessary, alterations and improvements in road-making should destroy or damage nothing of historic interest or natural beauty. Throughout, it will be noticed, the suggestions made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to his new Board took it for granted that the main object to be aimed at was the improvement of existing roads.
Now the outlook is completely changed. The Memorandum explaining the Chancellor's Development Bill has been published, and it is evident that the main duties of the pro- posed Board are not to improve existing roads, but to make new ones. The Board is to consist of about five members (too small a number, surely), and this is the wording of the Memorandum :—" The Board are given power to act either directly by themselves, constructing new roads, or indirectly through the existing highways authorities, whom the Board -will be able to stimulate by means of grants and loans made in consideration of the authorities undertaking either to construct such new roads or to effect such improvements in existing roads as will facilitate motor traffic." (The italics are ours.) As to the use of these new roads, we find that "a new road constructed by the Road Board will be primarily a road confined to motor traffic, and the speed-limit will not apply on such a road. The Road Board will, however, have power to allow the road to be used for other kinds of traffic if it sees fit, and may impose charges for the use of the road on traffic other than motor traffic." Other provisions follow, such as empowering the Board to purchase land in rural districts on either side of the road to the extent of two hundred and twenty yards in depth, with a view to reaping increment in value, and so on. With these provisions we need not deal here, merely noting that they emphasise the point that the duty of the Board is to construct new roads rather than improve old ones. Of dust prevention, or of any other form of traffic other than motor traffic, we bear nothing ; though the dust problem, which has always been a road problem, must surely come first, for the present, in the work to be considered by any Road Board.
Is not the compiler of the Memorandum rather one-sided • in his view of the future of British roads ? Considet the
words we have italicised, and substitute for them the words "as will facilitate road traffic," and surely you will get a little nearer to the ideals which should be kept before the minds of a Road Board. The roads should be made better for every kind of traffic by which they are used; they should be made better for drivers of carts and carriages, better for riders of horses, better for cyclists, better for pedestrians, and better, too, for dwellers in houses which have a road frontage. They should be made better for motorists, most decidedly also, but they should not be altered with the first and foremost object of benefiting the motorist, or of "facilitating motor traffic," which many plain people will only understand to mean enabling the motorist to drive faster everywhere. For if you ask : "For whose benefit are these new roads, with no speed-limit, to be made ? Who wants such roads ? "—there
is only one answer. It is the road-hog, and nobody else. No motorist who means to use our present roads fairly, without annoying others, or running any danger himself, would ask for such roads, or would use them if they were made. The vast majority of motorists in this country, although they may find the present speed-limit of twenty miles an hour occasionally tiresome and needless, woald not wish to travel on roads where there was no speed- limit whatever. What ordinary man, with any regard for his own safety or that of his car, would venture on a stretch of road where it was legal for cars to drive at eighty or a hundred miles an hour ? A riding man would as soon think of taking a quiet canter with his daughter over a stretch of downs where he knew there was to be a trial of racehorses. As for the "other kinds of traffic" whiclAre to be permitted to use the new motor roads, that is probably one of those touches of humour which are occasionally found lurking in Memorandums issued by Government offices. Imagination pictures a procession of perambulators taking advantage of a nice, sunny promenade. But it will be a little more difficult for motorists in general to appreciate the humour of the situation taken as a whole. Here they have been trying for years to persuade the public that the motor is not merely the rich man's toy, that motorists are not a class apart, that it is only the road-hog who wants to race, that the motor is a vehicle which with care and thought should fit in perfectly safely and rightly with all other existing traffic, and that the thing for the trade to do is, not to spend its energies in producing high-powered racing cars, but to try to put on the market an inexpensive, useful machine which can be used by others besides rich men—by the doctor, the agent, the farmer, the shopkeeper—as an ordinary vehicle of the common King's highway. Now, on the contrary, motorists are asked to proclaim, through the Road Board which their taxes create, that they are, as a fact, a class apart; that the motor is a special kind of vehicle which needs a special kind of road ; and, inferentially, that, needing a special kind of road, it is an unsuitable vehicle for the public highway. All this just as motorists were congratulating themselves that the road-hog was dead and at least hall buried. They will surely dig him up again with rather a bitter chuckle.
It is not as though there were a lack of opportunities of spending money in order to improve the roads which exist. There are still thousands of miles which can be rendered dustless; there are still hundreds of corners and crossings which are at present dangerous and could be made safe ; there are still dozens of places, within a short radius from London, where the making of a loop-road, or the widening of the existing road, or the altering of the gradient of the road on a hill, would make a difficult and awkward part of the highway easy and adapted to all forms of traffic. Every- ?body, for instance, who knows the London-Portsmouth road knows Guildford High Street,—a steep hill nearly always crowded with traffic, with awkward turns into it from side-roads. A loop-road to the north of the town would carry all the through traffic, which would avoid the The Times correspondent whom we have already quoteC gave the road running through the little village of Colnbrook on the Bath road, as an instance of a dangerously narrou highway "hardly more than twelve feet wide in places." The street need not be widened, but a loop-road would make all the difference to vehicular traffic of every kind, while the pedestrians and village children could still use the village street. Those are two instances familiar to most motorists near London; and most motorists, too, will know of hill roads which, at present too steep for low-powered cars, could be altered as to gradient so as to be easier both for motors and cart-horses. On these points not only motorists, but all users of the road, would be agreed. The Development Bill, so far as the portion of it dealing with the Road Board is concerned, has been referred to as in essentials non-controversial. In its present form it can hardly be said to be that. The proposed Board is to be called, after all, a Road Board, not a Motor Road Board. It should be worthy of its name. Ten years ago there no doubt seemed ground for advocating special motor roads—the suggestion was once favourably discussed in these columns—but experience has shown that this was a mistaken view. What is wanted now are better roads for all forms of traffic, not speed-tracks for scorchers.
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