Chapter II: The theoretical basis

Town traffic—a function of buildings

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As mentioned previously, traffic is a function of activities, and traffic is concentrated in towns because activities are concentrated there. It is characteristic of activities in towns that they mainly take place in buildings, or in places such as markets, depots, docks and stations which for the purposes of this description can be termed ‘buildings’. In towns, therefore, traffic can be said to be a function of buildings. It is broadly true to say that all the movements by vehicle that take place in the streets have an origin or a destination in buildings, of one kind or other in some place or other. Some of the vehicles will be moving within the town from building to building, others will be making their way from outside the town to buildings within it, or vice versa, whilst still others will merely pass through the town in the course of moving between origins and destinatons, both of which lie outside the town. Disregarding this through traffic, a simple but very important fact emerges—the patterns traced by all the vehicles as they move about are closely related to the manner in which the buildings are arranged. In a simple village street for instance the movement patterns are correspondingly simple, but in a city with buildings jumbled together, and even piled on top of one another, the journey patterns naturally become very complicated. It is this jumbled arrangement of buildings that is as much the cause of traffic difficulties in towns as the narrowness of the streets and the frequency of intersections. Vehicles making for particular buildings weave a complicated web of penetrative criss-cross journeys, and get in each others’ way at every turn as they zigzag through the web of streets. Mere widening of the streets does little to ease these conflicts. It is an important characteristic of the New Towns (where it was possible to design afresh) that the buildings are generally arranged in simple clear-cut patterns, and similar kinds of buildings are grouped together in zones.

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It is most important to recognise this connection between vehicles and buildings, and the complicated circulation pattern that results from a complicated arrangement of buildings. This is something which has not been properly understood in the past and which has not been revealed by the standard kind of ‘origin and destination’ survey. Virtually every building in a town has now become dependent for its continued functioning upon frequent servicing by motor vehicles. The vehicles so used have to worm into and out of every corner. Cars seek to penetrate everywhere. Buses need to be routed close to buildings. The journey patterns are extremely complex.

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The great majority of the buildings in the towns of this country can be classified under six main headings—Industry, Warehousing and Wholesale Distribution Centres, Shops and Retail Centres, Offices and Public Buildings, Schools and Dwellings. It is the movements between these main groups (to the extent that they take place by road, which is considerable) that constitute the bulk of the traffic in the streets. To recognise the nature of these movements is an important part of the task of dealing with urban traffic.

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Whilst the basic movements admit of fairly easy classification, there is an overlav of miscellaneous journeys which complicates the position almost beyond description. There are, for example, journeys between homes and entertainment, the latter being centrally situated (e.g. theatres) or at some particular place such as a football stadium or cricket ground. There are the journeys of doctors on their rounds, rambling journeys from house to house. There are the journeys of police patrolling the streets, of ambulances going to accidents, and of fire engines out on call—these three, although not numerous in relation to the basic flows, are important when it comes to the design of building arrangements because the vehicles involved must be able to penetrate almost everywhere. Then there are the journeys of furniture vans, hearses, ice-cream vans, postal and telephone vans, and vehicles used for many occasional purposes. An extremely important group of journeys are those made in connection with building operations—a big contract may impose a heavy extra load of traffic on the surrounding streets for many months.