Chapter 1: the working context
The need for study of transport methods: 40
if serious technological studies were undertaken… a whole range of new ideas for moving people and goods in cities would be produced. It is indeed to be hoped that we are not at the end of our ingenuity in the matter
The need for study of transport methods
40
It is possible, of course, if serious technological studies were undertaken, that a whole range of new ideas for moving people and goods in cities would be produced. It is indeed to be hoped that we are not at the end of our ingenuity in the matter. The bus, for example, for all its convenience, does not appear to be the last word in comfort. The travelator seems to offer much scope for development. Continuously operating chair-lifts might be used in a highly attractive way between points of pedestrian concentration to augment existing mans of travel. Conveyor belts, pneumatic tubes, and pipelines might well be developed for the conveyance of goods, perhaps even justifying rearrangement of commercial processes to facilitate their use. Why, for example, should the streets have to carry large tankers delivering fuel oil to individual buildings, when it could be piped in the same manner as water or gas or (as in New York, steam?)*
*Developments of this kind would be assisted if the archaic practice of burying pipes and cables in the ground underneath the road surface were abandoned, as urban reconstruction proceeds, in favour of capacious service ducts constructed integrally within the road. The idea is illustrated in the study for a central metropolitan block in Chapter III (Part Four).