May 27, 1922] 



NA TURE 



695. 



Some Post- War Problems of Transport. 



CIR JOHN ASPIN ALL'S long and unique ex- 

 •^ perience in transport problems renders his 

 " James Forrest " lecture — delivered at the Institution 

 of Civil Engineers on May 2 — of importance to the 

 general public, all of whom are interested in passenger 

 traffic and affected by the cost of the carriage of 

 goods. 



Sir John Aspinall dealt first with London passenger 

 traffic. In the early days of the lay-out of railways 

 the short distance passenger was scarcely considered, 

 and it was only by degrees that his demand for greater 

 facilities was met. Other lines of way have been 

 added, and the notable addition of the tubes has 

 been very effective. Travel has been helped also 

 by attention to details. The modern station with 

 its escalators is a vast improvement on the older types 

 with long and tortuous passages, and plain, well- 

 lighted directions enable passengers to find their 

 way easily. In the carriages, high backs to the seats 

 prevent vacant seats being seen ; strap-hanging is 

 preferable to pillars, which are apt to produce 

 blockages. The necessity of quick loading and un- 

 loading of a car means that the doorway and platform 

 arrangements have to be considered. It is a matter 

 of common knowledge that getting into and out of a 

 carriage during the rush hours at present is an 

 exceedingly trying operation. Sir John Aspinall 

 suggests the use of three platforms, two outer and 

 an island platform. Passengers from both trains 

 alight on the island platform and the trains are 

 loaded from the outer platforms. This plan should 

 be \&rw effective in separating the streams of 

 passengers. , Proposals have also been considered by 

 the tube companies for deeper tubes with fewer 

 stations, suitable for quicker long distance travel. 



The excellent reports and maps prepared by the 

 London traffic branch of the Board of Trade indicate 

 that future provision for the growing population 

 will require to be made towards the north-west and 

 south-west, both of which have much blank travel 

 space on the map. Admirable as may be the organisa- 

 tion which cuts down time spent in the steam opera- 

 tion of suburban trains, it would appear that London 

 traffic must henceforward rely on electrification to 

 make more frequent service possible. 



Traffic on the roads follows the same lines as the 

 railway traffic. Here the motor bus helps greatly. 

 In 192 1 the London General Omnibus Company 

 handled 761,250,000 passengers, which is nearly half 

 the number dealt with by all the railways in Great 

 Britain. The total passenger mileage on all the 

 railways was 227,397, 353, and the buses ran 87,000,000 

 miles, approximately one-third that of the railways. 

 The improvement of the motor bus has been so 

 great that it is safe to assume that the much more 

 expensive tramway system will not be greatly 

 extended. 



Notwithstanding the help of the most modern 

 buses, the extension of railway facilities in London 

 is urgent. The engineering world has not been 

 backward in proposing new means of dealing with 

 London traffic. Most of the schemes prepared before 

 1903 represent an enormous waste of money, not 

 because they were bad, but because of our methods 

 of private bill legislature, which often result in the 

 defeat of well-planned proposals on grounds which 

 subsequent events showed to be unsound. Sir John 

 Aspinall does not despair of some first-rate scheme 

 being adopted for future gradual development if it 

 were in the first instance considered and proposed 



NO. 2743, VOL. 109] 



by a strong committee of those who are engaged 

 in handling London traffic to-day, and then legalised. 

 Hitherto so much harm has been done by dealing 

 with this problem in bits that it becomes the more 

 desirable to deal with it as a whole. 



There has been great architectural objection to 

 the continued existence of certain railway bridges 

 over the Thames. On the other hand, the daily 

 number of people crossing these is much larger than 

 could pass over road bridges. Hence their abolition 

 would inconvenience the travelling public. The 

 objection on account of unsightliness is legitimate, 

 and can be avoided. A well-known engineer has 

 shown how a double-decked bridge can be constructed 

 at Charing Cross with all those architectural features 

 which our architect friends desire. In this bridge 

 the railways cross at the same level as at present ; 

 the roadways are at a higher level and descend with 

 easy gradients on both sides of the river. 



So far as we have gone, it appears to be true that 

 passenger traffic facilities have never been in advance 

 of London requirements. 



Sir John Aspinall gives strong evidence in favour 

 of long distance electrification on main-line railways. 

 The train capacity of any railway and particularly 

 of any terminal station is vastly increased by electrifi- 

 cation, and thus the capital cost of extensions and 

 widenings can be postponed for years. Shunting is 

 very costly ; of a total of 288,000,000 freight engine 

 miles run in Great Britain, half was on remunerative 

 work and 117,000,000 miles on shunting. The 

 ultimate ownership of all wagons by the railway 

 companies — thus cutting out the private owner — 

 will eliminate much shunting expenditure. Much 

 economy may also be anticipated from the new group 

 system. Sir John Aspinall has also something to 

 say about local rates. There are many country 

 districts through which railways run but have no 

 stations and therefore are not road users, where the 

 railways have to pay from 5 to 90 per cent, of the parish 

 rates. The equity of the case appears to demand that 

 those who do the damage to the roads should pay 

 the cost. On the Great North Road the " tons per 

 yard width of road per day " was 77-7 in 191 2 and 

 300-8 in 1920, and of the latter figure 51-5 per cent, 

 was due to heavy motors and tractors, for which 

 the figure was 16-9 per cent, in 1912. Goods trans- 

 port by road involves 300,000 vehicles at present, 

 and road maintenance costs 50,000,000/. per 

 annum. 



There is not a great deal of water power available 

 in this country for the production of electric current, 

 and we must still largely rely on coal. 



There seems to be much misunderstanding as to 

 the merits of canals. The fact is, however, that the 

 days of the small barge canal are gone. The greater 

 canals, which permit of the passage of large cargo 

 steamers, are on an entirely different basis. Sir 

 John suggests the conversion of disused canals into 

 roads, which of course would be level excepting 

 where there are locks. 



Many modern writers have pressed that civil 

 aviation should receive considerable national assist- 

 ance, but the same methods of gradual and persistent 

 investigation which have been applied for so many 

 years to the ships of the sea must be applied to the 

 ships of the air. There will probably be common 

 agreement that at no time in the history of this 

 country has national transport been so intimately 

 connected with the necessities of national defence. 



