HILARY SP URLING wriles
'The concept of the hub, would you say. M inister?'
'The concept of the hub,' said the Minister emphatically, 'must be preserved.'
Thirty-six thousand people walked round Pic- cadilly Circus at rush hour yesterday and many more were there in the PCUs* circling round Eros, as the Minister of Housing pronounced his doom on the urns and domes and swags of fruit on top of Swan and Edgar, on Wrigley's white worm and Coca-Cola's scarlet wheel, on the lean- tos sprouting in cracks in the frontage and the fretwork monsters over the London Pavilion (currently Peter Sellers and companion in the nude).
However, Mr. Crossman strongly supported the LCC's directive in 1958 that any architectural design should keep the coloured lights, 'so pro- ducing pleasing buildings by day and animation by night.' It seems we all like the sensation of rubbing shoulders with touts and junkies and pros at the heart of empire. 'The strange fact about that plaCe,' said the Minister, 'is that it attracts people to go there.' On any day you should be able to see, at least fifty-three thousand vehicles pass 'in daylight. Lord Holford's pia'zia plan of 1961 allowed for an increase in traffic' which had already over- taken the Circus by the time the plan was rejected two Years later. By this stage traffic was must accepted as a monster which London must hope to appease or defy. The monster had grown un- expectedly fast, but there were people watching it and in 1963 they made a stand. The Ministry of Transport's working party set a limit to the encroachment of traffic, beyond which human endurance would not go; Lord Holford was asked to revise his plan, making allowance for eighty-five thousand instead of fifty-six thousand vehicles to pass through Piccadilly each day. The Times, while admitting the 'voracious demands' of traffic, was furious at this knuckling under to them. MPs in the House talked about 'the sacrifice of human beings' to an insatiable appe- tite. The working party, whok report was pub- lished this week, was set up to examine the attack on Piccadilly Circus.
The working party has twisted and turned down all the avenues of appeasement; but trends show that the monster swallows new and wider roads almost as fast as they can be offered to him, and that the growth of population will enable him to keep abreast of attempts to make public transpOrt a more seductive rival to private cars.
There are signs that the monster is beginning to frighten people off effectively, at least in Pic- cadilly, where the traffic load increased between 1960 and 1962, but has now declined again to the 1960 figure. However, there is little hope here. The Circus avoids being choked by the bottle-
* PCU stands for Passenger Car Unit, e.g. 1 bus =3 PCU, 1 motor-cycle=0.75 PCU. neck horror only because; as the report points out, the traffic flow is conditioned by other bottle- necks farther out from the Circus. It adds, with considerable restraint, that 'there are at least three very strong arguments against relying on congestion itself as a means of reducing demand.' Other possibilities offer equally cold comfort a motorway encircling Inner London would have a minimal effect on the Circus, and a primary road network costing £1,500 million and making 90.000 people homeless would probably be offset by the ihcrease in traffic which the network would attract.
The present plan for a pedestrian retreat to an upper deck, leaving the ground level uncondition- ally to the monster, comes as a relief in this desperate pass. 'It would be technologically feas- ible, and much cheaper than carrying motor- ways,' said the Minister genially, 'we think our little four or five million is quite modest.' As to the next stage, we are in the dark. We may have `misgivings about what it would look like,' but the report hints at illuminations underfoot, and we should be able to enjoy them by 1975.
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