REBUILDING LONDON
Sit,—I ventured, some years ago, to propose a plan for rebuilding the City of London, which brought me little but abuse from owners and tenants of property within that area ; but the effects of air-raids in and around Queen Victoria Street have, I think, made my plan more immediately practical than it then was, and I therefore repeat it in The Spectator. The greatest part of the traffic of the City passes. through a very harrow bottle-neck opposite the Mansion House, a point at which no fewer than seven important thoroughfares meet: Princes Street, Threadneedle Street, Cornhill, Lombard Street, King. William Street, Queen Victoria Street and Cheapside. The con- gestion here, in normal times, is appalling. The distance from Liver- pool Street Station to the Bank is short, but the time taken in traversing it is almost incredible. Practically the only relief from this bottleneck is Cannon Street, which, however, is of small account, since it runs into Queen Victoria Street and passes on to congest the crowded region round St. Paul's Cathedral. It is not generally realised that there are seven surface railway stations within a radius of less than a mile from the Royal Exchange: Liverpool Street, Broad Street, Fen- church Street, Cannon Street, St. Paul's, Ludgate Hill and Holborn Viaduct, to say nothing of Waterloo and London Bridge on the south side of the Thames.
How many of these stations are necessary is a moot point, but there seems no reason why some of them, such as Ludgate Hill, which has not been used for passenger traffic for many years, and Holborn Viaduct, should not be demolished, and others, such as Cannon Street and St. Paul's, pushed back. Cannon Street could be amalgamated with London Bridge, which is connected with the City by the City and South London Underground Electric Railway, and St. Paul's could be re-erected as part of the great goods station on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge. These, of course, are very extensive alterations to propose, and cannot be effected in a short time or without great trouble and expense ; but something of this sort will some day have to be done, and the present time is the most convenient we are likely to have to begin the effort. • There is, however, another scheme, subsidiary to that, which has been made more immediately practical by the destruction of Queen Victoria Street than it was when I first 'proposed it. That plan was to extend the Thames Embankment along Upper and Lower Thames Street to Billingsgate or the Tower. This long and disgracefully' neglected thoroughfare, Upper and Lower Thames Street, is almost ideal for the diversion of traffic from Mansion House Street. It can carry heavy traffic from east to west without entering the centre of the City and without interrupting the flow of traffic from north to south at London Bridge, which crosses it by means of a viaduct. I am not an engineer, and cannot, therefore, say whether the construction of a viaduct from Southwark Bridge, across this street, to Queen Victoria Street is possible, thus increasing the extent of uninterrupted cross- traffic ; but even if that be not possible, the gain from the proper use of Upper and Lower Thames Street would be inestimable. The traffic over Southwark Bridge was not considerable in the days when I worked in the City, and I doubt if it is considerable now. The wharves which occupy and congest Upper and Lower Thames Street would, of course, have to be shifted from their present sites, but the reconstruction of Queen Victoria Street should make this easy. The problem of London's traffic, especially in the City, has agitated the minds of traffic-controllers for many years without producing a solu- tion of it. The Germans have given us a chance to solve it that seemed unobtainable before the war began.—Yours, &c.,
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