Page:Motors and motor-driving (1902).djvu/389

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ROADS
351

should have greatly helped to solve the housing problem. The simplicity of arrangement by which a man in the village could enter the omnibus at his own door and be carried straight to his work would greatly facilitate living in the country and working in town. But if this is to happen, as happen it ought, we shall at once have to deal with the disagreeable fact that London and most of our great towns are exceedingly difficult to approach by road. Almost all the high roads out of London run through a narrow neck, which is perpetually being blocked by traffic. A good example is Hammersmith Broadway. The Hounslow Road on the west and the great Hammersmith Road to the east sides of this Broadway are large and in every way adequate roads, but their size is rendered useless by the narrow half-mile of the much misnamed Broadway. This is not a solitary instance. In a word, if the roads are really to become great arteries of traffic under a system of automobile transport the authorities will have most seriously to consider the approaches to London. London, we hold, ought to be entered by at least eight great roads of uniform breadth, and the narrow necks like Hammersmith Broadway should be entirely abolished. It would be a very costly improvement, but it would be worth accomplishing.


V

It is easy to make out (1) that our roads are going to be vastly more used in the future than in the past, (2) that they have been neglected and cannot carry the increased traffic without great and unnecessary inconvenience being caused to the public, (3) that we ought to improve them. The difficult thing in a complicated political and social community like ours is to suggest how the roads are to be reformed. On the whole I incline to the belief that the plan proposed by the Roads Improvement Association (45 Parliament Street, S.W.) will prove the most practical.

Unfortunately, space does not permit me to state their