Chapter 4: Some lessons from current practice

The lesser impact of traffic

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One curious thing a visitor notices in the United States is that, in spite of the great number of vehicles, the adverse effects are not everywhere as severe as they are in towns in this country. This is not to say that everything is perfect—Fifth Avenue, in New York, for all its wonderful shops, is a bedlam of noise, and heavy with fumes—but in some way there is not the same grinding confusion. There are several reasons for this. The most important is the gridiron street plan which is almost universal except in the newer residential suburbs. This, on the scale on which it has been applied in America, produces very dull, monotonous street blocks, and streets which go away into the distance with no apparent termination, but it undoubtedly encourages an even spread of traffic all over the grid, and the impact at any particular place is reduced as a consequence. It enables very extensive one-way systems to be used on the simple principle of alternate streets of the grid being one-way in opposite directions. It has the advantage that if there is a downtown business area in the middle of the grid, then there are numerous alternative by-pass or filter-through routes available in all four directions, and it makes it easy to devise special truck routes to keep traffic out of busy areas. Many of the streets too are wide, which reduces the impact of traffic. The gridiron plan thus seems an easier system to deal with than the typical European spider’s web where the traffic is all funnelled down the radials into the centre, with great confusion resulting. Boston has just such a plan, and its traffic is noticeably far more confused than in other cities.

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Other factors are the almost complete absence of motor cycles, and the very small proportion of sports cars, with all the noise they produce; the silence of the big powerful cars which most Americans favour; and the maturity of the standard of driving. This last, perhaps significantly, is most noticeable in Los Angeles. The drivers do not seem to be in a desperate hurry, they seem content to glide along in their big cars in an orderly way, and their regard for pedestrians is generally exemplary. This discipline must be partly the result of a longer tradition of driving than most countries possess, but it may also stem from the rigid speed limits on all roads, including the most modern freeways. It is significant that the country which has gone furthest with the motor car, and furthest with the construction of special roads to accommodate it, should have found it necessary to restrict speed to half the speed the motor car can now easily be made to sustain. The highest limit in California, is 65 m.p.h. At a stroke, one of the attractions of the motor (one of the main selling points in other countries) has been removed.

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Last but not least in the reduction of the impact of the motor vehicle must be the freeways themselves in canalising many movements. But it should not be thought that all longer urban movements take place on freeways—a great amount of traffic is still carried on bad roads, bad in the engineering sense, and bad in the town planning sense. Even so, although the accidents reach the horrific figure of 38,000 fatalities a year, they are, in relation to the vast number of vehicles, considerably less than in Britain and the other major European countries.