Traffic in Towns (Buchanan and Crowther Reports)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 10 February 1964.

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Photo of Mr William Rodgers Mr William Rodgers , Stockton-on-Tees 12:00, 10 February 1964

I begin with the following quotation: Enormous efforts combined with great skill and ingenuity are continuously exercised by the transport and other authorities to mitigate congestion, but in spite of the great expenditure involved these measures result in little more than palliatives, and it seems impossible for effective action to keep pace with traffic requirements". That might have been written by Professor Buchanan, but it was not; it was written by Sir Anderson Montague-Barlow, in 1940, and whether we are dealing now with traffic problems in London, or with other aspects of the same subject, they are largely the problems of 25 years ago, enormously aggravated by the failure of Governments to take adequate action.

I give the House a further quotation: It is not a matter of building a few new roads. It is a matter of dealing with a new social situation. It is not traffic movement, but civilised town life that is at stake". That is Professor Buchanan, but not Professor Buchanan in this Report. It is Professor Buchanan, six years ago, in his book Mixed Blessing: the Motor in Britain. There is a great deal in this Report that was in that book written six years ago.

The Minister today claimed to have discovered Buchanan hidden in an obscure post in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and to have discovered him by first reading his book, but there is very little in the Buchanan Report which was not in that book. If the Minister says that he is now going to take account of his views, why did he not take account of them six years ago? What assurances have we that he will act now on the basis of an analysis which was available some considerable time before he came into office?

The Minister said today that the Buchanan Report is not a report in the normal sense but an analysis. He went on to explain this very odd device by which we have the Report of one Committee, Professor Buchanan's, and another, Sir Geoffrey Crowther's, published in front of it. I should like to know the precedents for this and whether in future we are to have an additional committee with every main one appointed, presumably to act as a buffer between the first committee and the Government. Is it to be a means of avoiding responsibility? Professor Buchanan was not required to make recommendations for public policy. I would expect the Minister to determine policy, but instead we had the Crowther Steering Group to make recommendations for public policy.

It has been said several times already in the debate that the main recommendation for public policy of the Crowther Steering Group was one which was turned down flat at the time by the Minister of Transport acting on the instructions of the Minister of Housing and Local Government and that was the proposal for regional development agencies. I emphasise this point about the lack of originality and the extent to which this is an analysis not in any way to suggest that Professor Buchanan within his terms of reference has not done an excellent job.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) that the Buchanan Report will have a great and good psychological impact, but we will judge the Report not on what we have before u today but on what Governments do with it in the future whatever the complexion of those Governments may be.

The Ministe skated over the question of cost and, of course, it is impossible to give a detailed account of what the implementation of these plans might cost. It depends upon the period over which they are sprea The Minister suggested 50 years, and hon. Member suggested 40 years. Anyway, 40 years or 50 years, it is a very long time, and much longer than most of those who were impressed by the Report when it was published expected it would be necessary to wait.

If we are not to be given detailed figures it is, nevertheless, fair to ask what provision within the next few years the Government are making for implementing the Buchanan Report. I sought the figures in the White Paper on Public Expenditure in 1963–64 and 1967–68 which the Government published in December. This was after the Buchanan Report was published. I looked up the figures for expenditure in the current year 1963 and also in the year 1967–68. It is perfectly true that by 1967–68 we shall see an increase of £110 million in expenditure on roads and £180 million in expenditure on housing and environmental services. But having obtained a combined figure of £290 million we then begin to take away.

We take away major improvements to motorways and trunk roads. We take away expenditure on road lighting and maintenance and minor improvements. We take away investment in new housing by local authorities and expenditure on water, sewerage, land drainage and coast protection. We take away expenditure on loans to local authorities for house purchase and improvement, and we take away Exchequer loans to housing associations. When we take all those away, we do not have very much of £290 million left.

It is fair to ask, and I hope the question will be answered today, what actual provision has been made for implementing the Buchanan Report in the coming four years. Is the White Paper out of date already because of the Minister's intention to implement the Report? If it is not out of date, exactly where in the White Paper are to be found the figures for carrying out the Buchanan proposals?

I should like to turn to two aspects of the Report so to speak at either end—one on parking and one on regional development authorities. I would take as my text on parking paragraph 444 of the Buchanan Report, which says that The broad message of our report is that there are absolute limits to the amount of traffic that can be accepted in towns… I agree that in any major new construction, where we are building a new town or where there are unusual opportunities for redevelopment, the problem of dealing with traffic it towns up to a population of 60,000 or even 100,000 is not difficult. The question is how we apply the Buchanan Report to existing town centres.

First, I think that we all accept the key rôle of public transport. I shall not develop this further, although there are clearly differences of opinion on how the key rôle can best be realised. Secondly, it seems to me that no planning can be successful without a clear view of the aim of planning, and especially of minimum tolerable speeds at peak hours and street capacity. Unless we have decided these things, it will be impossible to make clearly our other decisions about parking. Thirdly, I would rule out, as I think most people would, any possibility of limiting traffic in towns by edict, by deciding that certain categories of persons are entitled to use cars at any time, say Ministers of the Crown, and others are not so entitled, say ministers of religion. Of course, we could make differences and decide that there were priorities, but in all the circumstances this is something which we cannot pursue in normal peacetime conditions.

The fourth point is the question of taxing vehicles which are moving in towns. This is a serious proposition which deserves consideration. I was most interested in the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) when he said that we all know that calculations are going on in the Ministry of Transport into the way in which this would be done. I am all the more interested in this subject because on 5th February I asked the Minister what experiments were being undertaken and what further studies were going forward into the problem of charging moving vehicles. He replied: …I am at present considering what studies of these may be desirable."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th February, 1964; Vol. 688, c. 161.] It is deplorable if my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East was right and the Minister in his reply was telling less than the truth. Equally, it is outrageous if no studies are being undertaken. The Buchanan Report says that this is something which ought to be examined.

We know that four years ago in the United States a viable plan was introduced. Are we now, only at the eleventh hour, considering whether any studies are worth undertaking at all? The Minister has boasted in the past few months of all the new studies he has begun, but all these studies have been behind the times. The cost-benefit analysis which resulted in the decision to build the Victoria Tube ought to have been carried out ten years or five years ago. It should not have been left to a late stage when techniques were more refined than was necessary as a basis to make a decision. This proposal of a means by which people are charged for moving their cars at certain peak hours has a great deal to recommend it. It is a flexible and sophisticated instrument which deserves investigation and I should like to hear today whether or not something is being done about it.

On the problem of restriction, we are left with parking. I should like simply to enumerate quickly what those principles should be, very largely confirming what Buchanan says now but what he also said six years ago. First of all, highways for movement and not as a warehouse for cars. Secondly, no subsidy at all for public parking. Here I think I might find myself in disagreement with some hon. Members who feel that this is the only way to enable local authorities to get on with the job. If local authorities are to build garages—and I favour this—I do not think they should be subsidised at any point at all. There is no justification, as Buchanan mentioned earlier, for subsidising car parking.

Thirdly, I agree that meters should be adjusted to take what the traffic will bear. There is no point in charging 6d. an hour in Berkeley Square when the demand for parking is exceedingly high. I should prefer to see a flexible arrangement, given one important proviso. We know that a lot of parking meters are used by commuters. They leave their cars for two hours, they then drive round the block and park them again. I should like to see, in the new flexibility which we want, very short parking periods to enable a shopper to park his car for 15 minutes and no more.

Next there is the extent and location of off-street car parks. I think it is a mistake to believe that the provision of street parks will solve the problem. We must know the tolerable speed at peak hours. We must also know the absolute street capacity. If we are going to build new off-street parks in the centre of new towns we shall generate more traffic and not solve the problem at all. This applies also to the problem of planning permission for new building. I was for four years a member of a local authority in Central London and I served on the planning committee. I know how the whole of the planning committee—it included me—was delighted when a new office developer offered to put in more parking places than the minimum required by the planning regulations. We were delighted but we were wrong.

In the centre of London if new office buildings are going to include parking space for all the commuting employees we shall be faced with the problem of street capacity. Buchanan mentions the point. He is not dogmatic about the solution. I am not being dogmatic, but I think instructions should go to local authorities with a severe town centre congestion problem indicating that there is a problem of generating more traffic by doing something which all local authorities have believed for years was in the best interests of solving the traffic problem.

On the subject of development agencies, there has been a good deal of discussion in this debate, and I think rightly. I was not quite sure where the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) stood. It seemed at times that he stood on both sides. He wanted regional development agencies, and he also wanted to say what excellent work the local authorities did and, although they did excellent work, there was a need for regional development agencies.