RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 8 June 1876)

§ Mr. C. B. DENISON,
in rising to move— That the annually increasing congestion of traffic in the approaches to Hyde Park Corner has become the source of hindrance, annoyance, and danger to the public, and merits the early attention of this House, said, the importance of the matter was so great that he was justified in bringing it before the House by a direct Motion rather than leave it to be discussed on the Vote for the Public Parks in Committee. The question had been considered by the late Government, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adam) prepared a plan. Last year, also, a Vote on Account was taken for a scheme of the present Chief Commissioner of Works, but this scheme had been withdrawn, and another substituted, which was open for inspection at the Office of Works. Meanwhile the evil was a great and growing one. If the House took the line of traffic from east to west—from Charing Cross to Kensington—a distance of 2£ miles in a straight line, they would find that there was practically only one cross-over road for every species of traffic. It was much the same 1577 as though the Thames flowed for that distance and there was only one bridge at Hyde Park Corner to accommodate the traffic from north to south. In all Europe there was no other capital in which the great arteries of traffic were so intercepted. The result was great delay to people having urgent business, and at times risk of injury to life and limb. The public were naturally jealous of any curtailment of the Parks, and he would be the last man in the country to propose anything of the sort; but the advantage to the public would be so great by the sacrifice of a small portion of the corner of the Green Park which abutted upon Hyde Park Corner as to utterly outweigh any sentimental objection. That would give a sensible relief to the great bulk of the traffic now existing, and it would require a very trifling outlay of money. Several plans to effect the object so much desired had been suggested. One plan was to throw open Constitution Hill to the general public, but that did not meet with favour, for reasons which remained now in their full force. Another was to make a road from Hamilton Place to Grosvenor Place by means of a partial tunnel, and that that did not meet with favour nobody was surprised. That plan was followed by a plan of the late Chief Commissioner (Mr. Adam) for diverting Constitution Hill roadway, thereby isolating the Archway and bringing Piccadilly by a sweeping curve down into Grosvenor Place. This plan also failed to meet with favour. The present First Commissioner had also his plan, which was to pass under Grosvenor Place by an archway, but there were engineering difficulties in the way, and that had to be abandoned. The latest plan was one, as he understood it, carrying further inland, so to speak, from Grosvenor Place the present Constitution Hill road by a curve, and then passing over Constitution Hill a new road from Hamilton Place down to Halkin Street West. This plan would involve the placing of gateways or arches both in Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place, and would, he feared, be very inconvenient. Of course, every plan would be sure to meet with objections—first, on æthetic grounds; next, on the score of expense; and, lastly, from its interference with the Royal road by Constitution Hill and with the Archway and the Wellington Statue. The question, 1578 however, was the most practicable mode of preventing the present great obstruction of traffic. His own idea was that it would be far better to draw a boundary line from Hamilton Place down to Halkin Street West, making that boundary the Green Park and throwing open the intervening space into an ornamental Platz, intersected by the necessary roadways. At any rate, it was a question for the consideration of the House, and he hoped that no plan would be carried out which had not been so considered and discussed in the House. The new plan of his noble Friend would simply give two roads running at right angles into the main road at a very short distance from each other. Such a plan would give no sensible relief to the traffic. He believed there was no satisfactory mode of remedying the evil except that of throwing open this corner of the Green Park as an open space and leaving it afterwards to be dealt with in the matter of roads and cross-roads as the traffic might from time to time require. As to the subsidiary questions of gradients, levels, and the like, he need not detain the House except to say that no possible gradient in these arrangements could be steeper than the one running by St. George's Hospital down Grosvenor Place; and the distance from any point being about the same the gradients would not materially differ.

§ Mr. ADAM
said, he was in office so short a time as First Commissioner that he had no opportunity of maturing the plans he had in contemplation. There was no doubt that something required to be done in the direction intimated by the Motion. The block of traffic during the season at Hyde Park Corner was a spectacle which no other capital in Europe could show. Seven different streams of traffic seemed 1579 to meet at this point—one from Hamilton Place, two flowing east and west along Piccadilly, two flowing to and from Belgravia and Victoria Station, and two streams flowing out of and into the Park; and this without taking into account the carriages which passed from the Park into Constitution Hill. The difficulty, however, was how this immense traffic was to be relieved. Several plans had been submitted and considered, but none had yet been adopted. While he was in office a scheme was prepared by the Metropolitan Board which involved the throwing open of Constitution Hill to light traffic. The Government, however, were of opinion that this scheme interfered with the Park for pedestrian purposes, and it was consequently abandoned. His opinion was that no scheme which would curtail the privileges of pedestrians in the Park ought to be adopted. The Parks were primarily designed for pedestrians, and not for equestrians or people in carriages, and ought to be maintained in the interests of the former. To his mind the scheme which would commend itself most to public favour would be one which would interfere as little as possible with the use of the Park for pedestrians. Another scheme proposed to turn Piccadilly a little before it came to the Wellington Archway, leaving this Archway standing in the open, like the Arcde Triomphe in Paris. But the arch would, in this case, be isolated and useless, and the question would soon inevitably arise—"Why leave it there at all?" He had suggested a small palliative measure. There was at present an unnecessarily broad foot pavement on the Piccadilly side of the Archway and a little garden in front of the Archway. He proposed that this pavement should be thrown into the roadway and the foot pavement put where the garden now stood. One great advantage his proposal would have would be that it could be carried out within the space of three or four weeks. The model of the plan proposed by the noble Lord the First Commissioner of Works had not been seen by many hon. Members. He had had an opportunity of inspecting it, and he objected to the plan because it would cut across a corner of the Park and would interfere with the enjoyment by pedestrians of the Park. It was also open to the great objection that if it were 1580 carried out one road would cross another road on the level. Each scheme proposed was no doubt attended with difficulties; but he believed the best solution of them all would be the removal and throwing back to the extent of 50 feet or 60 feet of the Archway surmounted by the equestrian figure of the Duke of Wellington to a position across the entrance to Constitution Hill. That would not in any way interfere with the space available for the public in the Park. The only objection to that plan would be the expense, but that could be got over. The suggestion, at all events, was well worthy of consideration.

SIR JAMES HOGG
observed, that the Board of Works had given much consideration to the question before the House, and, speaking for himself, he must say he regretted that the Government of the day had not seen their way to carrying out the plan which the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Adam) had submitted to them. He had not seen the model of the plan proposed by his noble Friend, and could, therefore, give no opinion in reference to it; but this he must say—that some remedy must be found, and speedily, for the great inconvenience which now arose from the constant block of traffic at Hyde Park Corner.

LORD HENRY LENNOX
said, he gave a cheerful and willing assent to the statement of his hon. Friend's Resolution—that the increasing congestion of traffic at Hyde Park Corner had become an annoyance and a grievance, and he could assure the House that he had given a great deal of time to the elaborating of a scheme for the remedying of that grievance. He did not consider that any plan which had been proposed could be regarded as perfect in all its details. All he could do was to recommend one which he believed would be attended with the fewest objections and the greatest benefits. There was always a great objection to throwing any of the Royal Parks into the roadway, and to do what his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adam) proposed would not only take off some of the Green Park, but make Constitution Hill a zig-zag for persons going across Piccadilly into Hyde Park. Neither of the plans which he had heard from his hon. Friend (Mr. Denison) would meet with his sanction. His hon. Friend had not seen the model of the 1581 plan now proposed; if he had, he believed his hon. Friend would have said that it fairly met the difficulties of the case. If his hon. Friend had seen his (Lord Henry Lennox's) model, he would have perceived that if he made a road across the Green Park, from Hamilton Place to Grosvenor Place, he would have intersected the line of traffic from east to west by one coming down from the north. The road which he proposed to lay down, however, would do nothing of the kind. It would be 40 feet wide, and would be wide enough to hold four distinct lines of carriages—two going north, and two south. The road would be trumpet-mouthed at both ends. It would be from 76 feet to 100 feet wide in Piccadilly, and the heavy traffic coming from the Midland and Great Northern Railway Stations, and from the east and north-east, would come down Piccadilly, and instead of joining with the traffic coming down from Hamilton Place from the north, it would turn off by the trumpet-mouthed road across the Green Park, and run down Grosvenor Place to the Victoria Station of the London and Brighton and London, Chatham, and Dover Railways. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adam) said he had seen the model, and that he objected to the scheme, because it required embankments and cuttings; but, in point of fact, the scheme did not include either embankments or cuttings. He also said there would be a great pressure of traffic crossing this road across Constitution Hill, in the same way that there was now from Grosvenor Place to Hyde Park across Piccadilly. The traffic, however, across Constitution Hill, as now regulated, did not amount to one-twentieth or even one-thirtieth the traffic which now ran along Piccadilly and met the traffic into Hyde Park. There would be gates, and there would be no more stoppage for traffic than existed all over London wherever two lines of thoroughfare met. Whenever the Royal carriages were seen coming either way, the gates would be closed for a few seconds, and then the traffic would be resumed. If the hon. Gentleman who said he (Lord Henry Lennox) had never given the reasons for abandoning his former scheme would refer to the answer he gave early in the Session, he would find that he gave up his scheme on account of certain engineering difficulties in the gradients, 1582 which made it impossible to make a satisfactory job of it, and that he stated it was better to acknowledge an administrative failure than to carry out a plan which he was convinced, after a close examination, would not be satisfactory to the public. Among other engineering difficulties there would be a serious injury to the houses in Grosvenor Place, belonging to the Duke of Westminster. Constitution Hill must necessarily have been raised to such a height as to make a very steep embankment in front of those houses, thereby seriously prejudicing the light and comfort of the ground stories, if not partially of the first stories also. His hon. Friend knew that he could not carry out this scheme without asking for a Vote of money. He was not, however, asking for a Vote to-night for that purpose. After what happened last year his hon. Friend might feel satisfied he would not ride any hobby of his own to death, or carry out any road in which there might be serious difficulties without bringing it under the notice of the House. Even after that had been done, if he found that there were difficulties in the way, the course he had taken with regard to his plan of last year might teach his hon. Friend that he was not likely to force his own opinion in favour of a scheme which would be unsatisfactory to the public. The matter had given him great and constant anxiety, and he had looked into it very closely. He had examined the scheme of his right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. Adam), and found that it would increase the difficulty. It would widen Piccadilly, which was not what they wanted. It would only widen the road to the extent of one line of carriages down Grosvenor Place, and would leave the narrow neck of the bottle almost untouched. He felt himself, therefore, unable to counsel the adoption of that scheme. He could assure his hon. Friend that every facility should be given to him to examine the model, and to express his views upon the plan when the Estimate for it was brought forward; and, in the meanwhile, he should be grateful for any assistance which his hon. Friend or his right hon. Friend opposite would give him in regard to this matter. He might mention in favour of his own scheme that the Inspector of Police who was responsible for the safety of the public 1583 at Hyde Park Corner and Grosvenor Place had inspected his plan, and had reported that the relief which it would give to the heavy traffic would be enormous, and that, in his opinion, it would be the only reasonable solution of the difficulty.

§ MR. C. B. DENISON
said, that after what had been stated by the noble Lord he would not put the House to the trouble of dividing on this question.