Chapter 5: General conclusions

Environmental management

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Our studies show that urban areas are a long way behind coping satisfactorily even with present traffic volumes. Even if funds were allocated on an unprecedented scale, it would take a long time to catch up with the situation. The full logic of the ideas we have presented would entail the deliberate restraint of traffic until such time as urban areas were in proper shape to accommodate it. But as works were completed in various parts of the town, so the environmental capacity would be increased, and the ‘traffic ceiling’, as it might be called, could be progressively raised.

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This is doubtless a counsel of perfection, but we think something of the desired result could be obtained by the development of the technique we have called ‘environmental management’. What seems to be happening at the present time is that many traffic flows are being steadily augmented by the use of cars for optional journeys to work and to shopping. The result is increased congestion. The authorities, desperate for remedies, instigate traffic management schemes which ‘spread the load’ by diverting traffic over a wider network of roads. But this frequently introduces heavy traffic into streets which have an environmental function, with harmful results for the people living there. It seems to us a questionable ordering of social priorities that one group of people should find their established amenities ruined in order (in effect) to enable another group of people to use their cars for optional purposes.

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Environmental management would comprise, essentially, the delimitation of potential environmental areas, the removal of extraneous traffic from such areas, and the re-organisation of the system for internal movements by vehicles and pedestrians. The process could not be carried very far without there being a continuously-linked network. But directly this was established, even if insufficient in capacity due to limited width or inadequate junctions, it could be used, and its lack of capacity would act as the general restraining valve. The effect of this would be to transfer congestion to the embryo network rather than to let it build up in places where people live and work. If there has to be ’restraint by congestion’ (which we do not advocate as a desirable state of affairs, but which is likely to prevail in the interim stage) then the network seems to be the right place for it. To the extent that such congestion delayed seriously the flow of essential traffic it might not be acceptable, but the first remedy would be to curtail the optional traffic by some means in order to allow more space for the essential traffic.