ROADS TO NOWHERE
SIR.– It was good to find someone with original ideas about transport breaking through the barrier of authoritarianism, as Ian Nairn did.
But is his thesis not also a form of escapism? It is based on a number of fallacies. For instance, Los Angeles is not the inevitable late that awaits us all. It has grown up as the nonurbia that it is for other reasons- than the motor-car. There never has been a town there among the suburbs. Nor is it true that population increase and vehicle increase are going to make any conceivable system of roads out-of-date, for there seems a saturation point in both, and it arrives before the volume of traffic gets out of hand. With roadson more than one level it is quite possible for any town to handle all the traffic it can possibly get. We have just never attempted to deal with road transport on the scale and with the flair that we used in the Railway Age.
Certainly, after the Automobile Age there will he another. We should prepare for it. But meanwhile we can, and should, get the most rather than the least out of the Automobile Age. By encouraging the motor-car we can make ourselves more prosperous and less angry. By overlooking it we would add to the tensions of life and subtract from the potential efficiency of our economy.—Yours faithfully,
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