Report of the Steering Group

To: The Right Honourable Ernest Marples, MP, Minister of Transport

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The Steering Group

Sir Geoffrey Crowther, Chairman
Sir William Holford
Mr O. A, Kerensky
Sir Herbert Pollard, CBE
Councillor T. Dan Smith
Mr Henry W. Wells, CBE (Chairman of the Commission for the New Towns: Chairman, Land Commission)
Mr R. N. Heaton, CB Assessor

We were appointed in June, 1961 to act as a Steering Group in connection with the Study of the Long Term Problems of Traffic in Towns undertaken in the Ministry of Transport. It should be made clear that the Steering Group was not intended to be responsible for the major report itself. That is the work of the Study Group in the Ministry led by Mr Colin D. Buchanan. Their Report occupies the greater part of this volume. To make the position clear, we shall refer to it as the Buchanan Report.

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The duties of the Steering Group, as we have conceived them, have been threefold. First, throughout the period of the inquiry, we have been consulted by Mr Buchanan and his colleagues, and have been available to them for such advice as we could give. The relationship of the two Groups has been most happy throughout, and we are grateful to Mr Buchanan and the members of the Study Group for the trouble they have taken to keep us informed of the development of their work. We are also indebted to our successive Secretaries, Mr J. I. H. Baxter, Mr C. N. Tebay and Mr J. A. I. Gunn, of the Ministry of Transport.

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Our second duty was to give the Minister our opinion of the Buchanan Report, as it emerged from the work of the Study Group. We were to be free to take issue with it either on particular matters or as a whole. In point of fact, however, We have no reserve in commending it both to the Minister and to several of his colleagues (for the problems of which it treats are by no means confined to transport) and also to the general public, by whose interest and determination these problems can alone be salved. If we have been at pains to make it clear that the Buchanan Report is not our work, this is not because we wish to evade the responsibility for it, but because we want to emphasise that the credit for it belongs to Mr Buchanan and his colleagues, not to us. We congratulate them on having produced a most imaginative and stimulating attempt to foresee the problems of the future and to prescribe remedies for them.

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It is a pioneer study, in two senses. On the one hand, we believe it breaks a great deal of new ground. It is, we believe, the first study of the problem of traffic in towns which is both comprehensive and quantitative, It brings together two subjects which have usually been treated separately, at least for administrative purposes—namely the planning and location of buildings and the management of traffic. It attempts to put precise figures upon, the flows of traffic to be expected and to estimate the capacities of the various methods suggested for dealing with it. But on the other hand the Report is also a pioneer work in the sense that it is an exploratory study indicating the direction in which thought should be turned and further researches undertaken. It is perhaps particularly necessary to emphasise that the sections of the Buchanan Report that deal with Newbury, Leeds, Norwich and part of London should not be regarded as being more than illustrations of how the principles worked out in the Report might take shape when applied to specific localities; they are not to be regarded as proposed plans for those towns and cities.

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Our third task was to attempt to draw some of the conclusions for public policy that seem to us to emerge from the Buchanan Report. In doing this, it was thought that we, the Steering Group, could go further than might be appropriate for a Study Group working within a Government Department. It seemed to us that we could do more good by stimulating debate than by attempting to propound settled conclusions. We therefore decided not to spend many months in taking evidence, and producing another long and comprehensive report, but to set out the problem, as it seems to us, in a brief and possibly dogmatic way and to add, in the same manner, some recommendations for the solution. This we have attempted in the paragraphs that follow. We must emphasise that they are in no sense a summary of the Buchanan Report. We have found it necessary to go over some of the same ground, if only to make it clear what we are talking about. But we have attempted to do so in a way that will serve as a stimulus to reading the Buchanan Report itself, and not as a substitute for doing so.