Abstract
IN his presidential address on “Roads and Traffic” to the Junior Institution of Engineers on December 9, Sir Charles Bressey raised many interesting questions the answers to which are not easily found out. He says, for example, that deductions from the most careful traffic observations are apt to be stultified, at any rate in a free country like Great Britain, by the essential fluidity and waywardness of traffic. The installation of traffic lights may lead drivers to make use of hitherto unfrequented side roads, so as to avoid the signals. These vagaries vitiate comparisons, and are particularly disconcerting in London, where so many alternative streets are available for an intelligent driver. In addition, the science of mechanical engineering advances so rapidly that steep roadgradients which render a road unpopular at present may in ten years timeoffer practically no hindrance to a motor-car. Any attempt to replan an ancient capital must be largely empirical; opportunism must play a leading part. The inertia of habit is a powerful force. Theoretical considerations have to be tempered by common sense based on a general knowledge of London's development and of the improvements which have been carried out or rejected during past years. However carefully the flow of traffic be recorded, we are still at a loss to account for the underlying causesof the waywardness. The mysterious Sittings of trade and industry influence the distribution of the nation's population. The advantages of undeviating directness over great distances, unhesitatingly accepted by the Roman road engineers, who were untrammelled by county boundaries and ringfences around estates, would not be accepted implicitly to-day.
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Roads and Traffic. Nature 143, 71–72 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143071d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143071d0