Report of the Steering Group

The impending motor age

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In Britain, the Motor Age is still at a comparatively early stage. We are approaching the crucial point when the ownership of private motor vehicles, instead of being the privilege of a minority, becomes the expectation of the majority. At present, there are in Great Britain about 16.4 million families and 6.6 million cars (excluding buses and lorries) and 1.8 million motor cycles. When allowance has been made for cars that are not privately owned, and for families that own more than one car, it is not yet true to say that more than a bare majority of families own a motor vehicle—and perhaps nor quite that.

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There is no doubt that the desire to own a car is both widespread and intense. The number of people who genuinely do not desire to possess their own private means of transport must be very small, and we think it is safe to base estimates of the future on the assumption that nearly all the families who, at any time, can afford to own a car (or who think they can) will in fact do so. The ownership of private cars is a direct function of real incomes. Not only, therefore, will the total number of cars increase as average real incense rise, but the most rapid increase will come sooner rather than later, for the reason that there is a very large group of family incomes now just on the verge of the car-affording class. This is reflected in the forward estimates, which are dealt with in paragraph 45 of the Buchanan Report. By the year 2010—that is, about fifty years from now—it is expected that the total number of cars will be over four times what it was in 1962, which implies an average rate of increase over the whole period of about 3¼% per annum compound. But the estimate for 1980 implies an average annual increase of 6% over that period of eighteen years, and in the eight years to 1970, the rate of increase will be as much as 7¾% per annum. Not only is there a flood of cars coming, but the greater part of the increase will be in the years immediately ahead. (See figure 38).

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The direct consequences of this great flood of vehicles, which are the immediate concern of the present study, will be seen on the nation's highways, and most of all in the streets of our cities. But there will also be indirect consequences of a very wide-ranging character. All the industries that make and serve motor vehicles and that cater to the motorist will expand. Fuel for this flood of motor vehicles will have to be provided and (so long as it is petroleum-based) will place a burden on the balance of payments, The economic and social consequences will ramify into every corner of the national life, We doubt whether it is realised how fundamental is the influence of transport on the shape and growth of a nation’s economy. When it is a question of the stimulation of underdeveloped economics in other parts of the world, it is a truism that transport is one of the two great ‘nation-building’ influences (education being the other) which are basic to everything else. What does not seem to be so readily accepted is that a mature economy is equally sensitive to the condition of its transport system. If the coming great flood of vehicles means freer and easier transport of goods and persons, it cannot help but be beneficial. If, however, it leads to a clogging of the arteries of transport, it may lead to a general thrombosis.

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One particular result of the growth of car-ownership deserves to be singled out, both because it might be overlooked and also because it has a direct bearing on much that we shall have to say in the paragraphs that follow. Before very long, a majority of the electors in the country will be car-owners. What is more, it is reasonable to suppose that they will be very conscious of their interests as car-owners and will give them a high priority. It does not need any gift of prophecy to foresee that the Governments of the future will be increasingly preoccupied with the wishes of the car-owners.

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These matters are not purely speculative, We can draw on a mass of evidence available from, the United States and Canada, which are, broadly speaking, a generation further into the Motor Age than Britain, Though the total number of cars in North America is still increasing, the rate of increase relative to the population has slowed down, for the reason that these communities are much closer to the point of final saturation at which everyone who wants a car has one. The phase that we are approaching now, they went through a generation ago. And, though there are obvious differences between North America and Britain, we think they are differences of degree only and not such as to invalidate a comparison. For example, though it is true that North America, taken as a whole, has an infinity of space compared with this crowded island, there are also regions—especially the metropolitan region stretching from Massachusetts tc Virginia—which are nearly as crowded as we are. It would be a great mistake to say ‘Things won't be like that here’. In more respects than not, they are likely to be very much the same.

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American experience tends to contradict one of the beliefs from which some people in this country are inclined to draw comfort—the reflection that traffic congestion will itself set a limit to car ownership. ‘People won't go on buying cars when they find they can't use them’. It is important to understand the very restricted sense in which alone this seems to be true. No doubt there is some ultimate degree of congestion that would make people stop using their cars. But it would have to be a very far-reaching degree of congestion, far worse than anything we know at present. Lack of a garage, or other place to house a car, can sometimes be a deterrent to the ownership of cars but probably only in the very centre of large cities. There is little evidence that congestion of traffic stops people from owning cars and trying to use them, and that is perhaps the fact of greatest relevance. On the facts at present available, there is apparently no tendency for the average mileage per car to fall as the total number of cars increases. The rising tide of cars will not put a stop to itself until it has almost put a stop to the traffic, essential and non-essential alike.

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We have been speaking hitherto of privately owned motor vehicles, which do indeed constitute the largest part (and an increasingly large part) of the total. But alongside the rise in their numbers, there has been an equally formidable rise in the numbers of lorries, vans and cars used for business purposes. The total of commercial vehicles has risen by 53% in the last 10 years, and it is clear that this increase also is likely to continue. However successful the railways are in recapturing long-distance goods traffic, the volume of commercial traffic in towns will hardly be affected, and it is bound to grow with the growth of the economy.

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These increases are likely to be compounded by the rapid rise in the total population of this island which, it is now evident, faces us in the next few decades. The most recent estimate of the Registrar-General is that in 30 years’ time the total population of the United Kingdom will be 25% higher than it is now. These additional millions will want to own cars, and they will give rise to an added volume of business and commercial traffic, most of which will be carried on the roads.

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In some parts of the country there will be still another aggravation. We would not wish to prejudge the success of the efforts that are now being made to attract industry and population to those parts of the country that have been losing them. But it is doubtful whether they will have such a far-reaching success as wholly to reverse the present tendency for South East England and the Midlands to grow at a faster rate than the rest of the country. This means that, however severe the traffic problem looks like becoming in the country as a whole, it will be even more severe in those parts that are already the most congested.

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The loss of wealth and of amenity that the nation is inflicting on itself through the congestion of traffic is already very large. There is an enormous waste of manpower. No longer, in our cities, can life be divided between work, sleep and leisure; there is a fourth division of time spent sitting in vehicles that, if they are moving at all, are moving far too slowly. There is a waste of capital. Too many vehicles have to be provided to do the necessary work of transport, and the time required to produce almost anything is unduly prolonged. There is a waste of fuel—almost all of it imported. There is no doubt that these economic wastes add up to hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

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Nor are these the only losses that the rising tide of motor traffic brings with it. In 1962 no less than 6,709 people, 761 of them children, lost their lives in road accidents. This is the worst wastage of all, and it also can be expected to rise with the traffic, unless effective steps can be taken. The largest proportion of the whole, and that part that should be regarded as being most preventible, is accidents to pedestrians. It may be that future generations will regard our carelessness in allowing human beings and moving vehicles to use the same streets, and our apparent callousness to the inevitable results, with the same horror and incomprehension with which we recall the indifference of earlier generations to elementary sanitation.

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Everyone is conscious, in a general way, of the ‘traffic problem’ and that it is on the increase. In the course of the present study, we have had to look at the quantitative facts of the probable increase and to try to imagine, with some precision, some of the probable consequences. We are not conscious of any exaggeration in saying that we have been appalled by the magnitude of the problem and by the speed with which it is advancing upon us.