Chapter III – part two: A large town

A minimum network

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The outline of our calculations will have made it clear that work journeys by car accounted for the greater part of the traffic volumes that would arise, and hence for the need for an elaborate network. Coming to the other extreme, we then examined the scale of network required to deal only with the essential industrial business and commercial traffic, together with sufficient public transport (buses) to carry all persons travelling for other purposes.

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Figure 118 shows the theoretical network required for this minimum traffic. The pattern is substantially different from the first network, because the industrial and commercial traffic now becomes the dominant element. The number of new roads required would be much fewer because the peak period work-journey traffic is, of course, dramatically reduced by eliminating commuters’ cars. Even so the existing road network would need to be augmented by the provision of about 18 miles of new road of three or four lane capacity, together with about 35 new or re-made inter-sections. This length of additional road does not take account of new links which might be required on environmental grounds, for example to remove traffic from a shopping centre located on a main radial road.