Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/30

But there is another way, and that is by improving transit facilities. All round our towns there is any amount of land, at perhaps £50 an acre. A very little way out of even London, land may be bought at that price. But it seems clear that we shall never make such land available for the housing of the working people, until we have a much more complete system of transit. It must be very cheap and very rapid transit, and it must be especially adapted to the working hours of the district. The most complete transit system in the world belongs to Belgium—a country which I investigated very closely for four years. In Belgium, one-third of the town-workers live in the country, and they come into the town by cheap workmen's trains. In Liège, which has a population of 160,000, there are 10,000 people coming in from the country to work. If we could get an improved system of transit, we could make available a large amount of cheap land, and it would then be quite easy to spread houses more widely over the ground. It is