HC Deb 03 April 1958 vol 585 cc1432-41

2.18 p.m.

Mr. George Isaacs (Southwark)

I am grateful to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for giving me notice that we were likely to reach this subject a little earlier than had been expected and I thank him for being here to answer me.

I wish to raise matters arising out of Answers given to me by the Minister on 26th March when I raised the question of the surfacing of the Elephant and Castle area. There were two points in his Answers which caused me a little concern. I shall deal with each separately. The first relates to cost and the second to danger.

The Minister told me: The total cost of constructing the two roundabouts and the associated roads at this junction"— that is, at the Elephant and Castle— will be about £1½ million, including the cost of acquiring land and property. A little later he told me: The extra cost of using mastic asphalt throughout would be about £13,000 …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1958; Vol. 585, c. 410.] That was the extra cost of using mastic asphalt instead of hot rolled asphalt, which was cheaper.

The Minister said that he did not think that the extra cost was justified by a longer potential life of about five years. A little later he made it evident to me that he was under the impression that the L.C.C. had agreed with the Southwark Borough Council in making the proposal for the cheaper material. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to note that when the L.C.C. first put the proposal in a tentative form to the Ministry of Transport its representatives had not then had any talks with the borough council. Subsequently, they did so and then they indicated that they would agree—I do not know whether "they" meant the L.C.C. or the Ministry of Transport—to mastic if the borough council paid the difference.

The first question is: why should the borough council pay the difference? The council is the maintaining, not the constructing, authority. The council is of the opinion that it is the duty of the constructing authority, according to the law relating to roads, to provide roads capable of carrying the traffic that can be anticipated on those roads. The maintaining authority feels that the roads should be made adequate for a long life, instead of making it necessary for the authority to step in sooner than would otherwise be the case in order to resurface the roads.

Although the Minister is not local to the area, he knows a great deal about it because his journeys take him across it frequently. Most people do not appreciate what a busy junction this is. Six major roads and seven bridges serve this circus. That is not all the story, because three of the major roads are themselves roads which absorb others. For example, the Waterloo Road, carrying traffic from Waterloo Bridge, joins the London Road within a short distance of the Circus. Just before reaching the Circus the Newington Butts Road is joined by Lower Kennington Lane and opposite, on the City side, there is Newington Causeway, which takes the traffic direct from London Bridge and carries it through Southwark Bridge Road. So, in fact, nine major roads converge upon this spot. If care is taken to count the bridges which pour their traffic into this centre it will be found that there are eight, not seven, bridges concerned.

What kind of traffic is there on these roads? I am not sure how long ago a count was taken but I am sure the volume is much greater now. According to my information, the last count showed that 2,000 vehicles an hour cross the Elephant and Castle and that 700 buses cross the junction at the peak period. All this traffic is heavier and denser than in any other place. We hear a lot about Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus, but the traffic there is "fancy" traffic compared with what we get at the Elephant and Castle. The two kinds might be described as first-class and second-class traffic. We get a great amount of industrial and other heavy traffic, such as buses, crossing there.

The present density of traffic is bound to be increased when the new circle is made, because it will take away three convenient little tricky by-passes which are used by those who know the locality. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary has gone that way at any time, but so heavy is the traffic on what I call circle dodges that the traffic authorities have had to put up traffic lights there to control it.

For example, people coming down Newington Butts who want to go into New Kent Road dodge the Elephant and Castle by turning down Crampton Street through Hampton Street across Walworth Road into Deacon Street and through Rodney Road into New Kent Road, where there is a lot of traffic. These are streets lined with small houses, there are children about, and there has been complaint for a long time about the pressure of traffic.

When the new circle is constructed traffic will not be able to go round through Crampton Street, so it will join the flood in the circle. There is another flood coming from the New Kent Road which wants to go back into Kennington. It will not be able to go through Deacon Street because there is to be one-way traffic there, so it will come through Elephant Road—I nearly said "Elephant's trunk"—and get into the Butts in that way. On the other side there is a similar dodge coming down through the Newington Causeway. Traffic goes through Rockingham Street and gets out into the New Kent Road in that way.

The actual appearance of the place as regards traffic will be considerably different when the traffic becomes finally channelled into the new circle. Again, the maintaining authority has submitted for the consideration of the Minister—I say at once that we are sure that whatever we put forward will receive sympathetic and careful consideration, so I do not feel we are pushing against any hostility in this matter—the difficulty of traffic restriction. If we use inferior material, which is what we consider it to be, then the road will need to be resurfaced more frequently than would be the case with the more expensive material. This will mean delay. It will mean a long line of vehicles waiting, it will mean a waste of petrol, it will mean a waste of time. There will be the cost of police control and loss of the control of temper by the people involved in the delays.

It has been hinted that the delays could be overcome by doing the maintenance work at night. That sounds all right, but night work and weekend work costs more. Again, it is wrong that the borough council should be called upon to meet this heavy, and what we think unnecessarily frequent, cost of road maintenance because of traffic which is not our traffic. It is the traffic of Greater London that uses this place, going to and fro on its lawful occasions. So it is unfair to make the borough council pay those charges. At the same time there would be no objection on the part of the borough council to meeting them if the construction work is done in a way which they think would be the best in the long run.

One other point the Minister mentioned was that it was better to leave this to the L.C.C., which is the authority constructing the roads. I do not want to throw any stones at the L.C.C. but I can understand them agreeing to a smaller construction charge if the borough council is prepared to bear the comparatively heavy cost of maintenance later.

The second point in the Minister's argument to which I draw attention is one which I assure him has given some little concern to borough engineers. I know it was an answer given to a supplementary question and I do not think it means, or was intended to mean, what it could be argued to mean. The Minister said, on the question of danger: … one disadvantage about the type the Southwark Borough Council wants is that the road becomes very highly polished and dangerous to traffic."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1958; Vol. 585, c. 411.] In the short time I have had at my disposal I have made inquiries, but I have not yet heard of any danger to traffic. I have obtained a copy of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Road Research Laboratory Road Note No. 5 which was published in 1948. On mastic asphalt, in the second column in page 13, I find this: This material is used on the most heavily trafficked roads; it is able to carry successfully both pneumatic-tyred and iron-shod traffic. There are other arguments which have some weight, especially with reference to tanks. It states: Considerable difficulties have been experienced in devising road surfacings which, when new, will withstand the effects of turning tanks, particularly on roadways inside tank depôts. Mastic asphalt has been found to be the most generally satisfactory surfacing for this purpose, provided that a suitable composition is used. … Later, it states when these conditions are fulfilled, the effect of a turning tank is to polish the surface. So, although it mentions polishing the surface, it says nothing about that polished surface being likely to result in danger.

I and my colleagues have made a few inquiries and we have found that mastic surfacing has been used for a long time in various parts of London—in the City of London, Westminster and Holborn, and, I believe, in Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square—and there has been no evidence of danger. We have looked at a patch of mastic asphalt which has been down for seven years in the Borough High Street in Southwark, and there is as yet no sign of polishing or of danger.

If there is danger resulting from polishing, why put down mastic asphalt, as the Ministry suggests, just at bus stops? Will there be more danger, if there is any danger at all, if the complete road is surfaced with it?

I put these points for the consideration of the Minister. In respect of the whole job costing £1½ million the difference between supplying mastic asphalt and hot rolled asphalt is £13,000, and of that the Ministry would not have to meet much more than about £10,000. If mastic asphalt were used, the job would be much more satisfactory. It would obviate a lot of trouble in taking up the road; it would avoid a great deal of subsequent delay and irritation. In this House we do not like using clichés, but I recall the old one about not spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar, and I should like to put to the Minister a paraphrase of that, "Do not spoil this road by using a ha'p'orth of hot rolled asphalt when you could use three-farthings' worth of mastic asphalt and make a jolly good job of it."

We have had years of delay and many promises. For about forty years—almost all my political life around Southwark—we have been told that we should have a reconstructed Elephant and Castle junction. It has been coming and going, coming and going. I believe that it is really here now. Let us make a decent job of it. Let us put down a road which will carry all the traffic that will use it. I urge the Ministry to make inquiries, for I believe it will be found that the use of mastic asphalt will not involve the danger of polishing and slipping. I hope that we shall be given a road surface which will last the longest possible period and give a sense of pride and satisfaction to those who have been concerned for such a very long time about securing a reconstructed Elephant and Castle junction.

2.32 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent)

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Isaacs) upon the eloquence that he brings to this somewhat esoteric theme of what road surface we should have at the reconstructed Elephant and Castle junction. I know that he has been interested in this matter for some time. Indeed, his persistence seems to be well associated with the name of the junction.

I have prepared myself to reply to him by making some research into the matter. I find that the relative merits of mastic asphalt and hot rolled asphalt are very delicately balanced. There is extremely little in it. I can confirm a great deal of what the right hon. Gentleman said as being correct, but I will add just a few details which may help to fill in the picture.

The reconstruction of the junction with the new double roundabout will in total cost nearly £1½ million, and the Ministry is giving a grant to it of over £1 million. I am very glad that it falls to us in our big road programme to make possible this very badly needed improvement. I know the junction. I know how very bad it is now. The various little highways and byways by which one has been able to get round it have all been progressively dealt with by the police for safety reasons. A real job badly needs doing, and I am very glad that it is now going ahead.

It is true that the extra cost of the mastic asphalt would be only £13,000, a small figure in comparison with the very big total cost. What we have decided to do is to put down a mastic asphalt surface only for the bus bays, where the greatest strain will come, and that will cost an extra £1,000. As to the rest of the surface, we still do not feel that mastic asphalt would be justified.

I should like to give a short account of the pros and cons of the two surfaces. Mastic asphalt is laid by hand in a semi-molten condition. One sometimes sees it being laid at very important junctions in London when large lumps of tar-like stuff are brought along and put into a boiler where they are boiled up and made into a suitable mixture which is discharged in a molten condition on to the ground. It is then spread by means of trowels. The spreading of it is a lengthy, laborious business. It means—here is an important practical disadvantage—that the process of laying mastic asphalt, because it takes so much longer, requires a far greater period of occupation for surfacing work.

The advantage is that it gives a very tough surface, the toughest surface possible, a very long-wearing surface with a life of fifteen to twenty years. We use it for very heavy traffic conditions, especially where there is heavy turning.

Mastic asphalt has the further disadvantage that when the time comes for resurfacing it is again a very laborious job to break it up. It cannot be broken up by a machine as the other type of surface is broken up by putting a burning machine over it. The mastic asphalt surface has to be broken up by hand drill, again a long, laborious process requiring longer road occupation.

Having been put down, the mastic asphalt surface is given a non-skid surface—the condition in which we see it and use it—provided by a coating of chippings which is then roiled in on top of the mastic asphalt. That gives the finished article.

The hot rolled asphalt is laid by a machine called the Barber-Greene machine, some of which I expect we have all seen about the roads. It operates very quickly indeed putting down the surface in 10 ft. strips. The road occupation required for surfacing is remarkably short. It has the advantage to which I have already referred, that when the time for resurfacing conies along it can be burnt off quickly. Once again, the road occupation time is short.

The life of hot rolled asphalt is ten to fifteen years, given conditions comparable with those in which mastic asphalt is used. Therefore, on average there is about a five-year difference between the two surfaces. Hot rolled asphalt is given exactly the same surface finish by means of a coat of chippings rolled in on top in order to provide a non-skid surface. Therefore, both surfaces finally look exactly the same.

I should like to deal with the query raised by the right hon. Gentleman on the point of skidding, which was referred to by my right hon. Friend in answer to a supplementary question. It is a slightly complex one and, I think, easily misunderstood in the process of answering Questions at Question Time. The point is that mastic asphalt tends in the latter part of its life to give a surface more prone to skidding for the very simple reason that it is down several years longer than the hot rolled asphalt and, therefore, the non-skid surface of chippings has naturally worn down more because it has been down for more years. In the final years of the life of a mastic asphalt surface, the non-skid surface of chip-pings has probably been worn smooth.

Mr. Isaacs

Does the hon. Gentleman have any experience? Have any roads in London been down long enough for them to come to the end of the life of mastic asphalt, for example?

Mr. Nugent

Yes, and that is what happens. I am not saying that this is very serious, but it is an explanation and it is obvious that it would be bound to happen.

The chipping surface, which is put there to prevent skidding, naturally becomes more worn the longer it stays down. Where we have put it down at bus stops, it is less serious in that respect, because buses are not turning, but pulling up straight. The great advantage of the mastic asphalt surfaces is that being rather tougher than the hot rolled asphalt surfaces, they can stand more heavy turning movements and that type of surface has been somewhat reserved for areas where turning traffic is specially heavy, turning traffic rather than ordinary running traffic. That also goes for stopping traffic, as at bus stops.

In a word, the pros and cons are that a mastic surface has the advantage of a longer life of nearly five years. Unfortunately, very few surfaces are allowed to run their full life in London, because all too often one of the statutory undertakers comes along and wants to pull up the road. If one can be sure when the road is put down that it will last for ten years, one is doing well. To hope to keep it down for fifteen or twenty years is optimistic.

Against mastic asphalt is the fact that it is rather expensive. I agree that £13,000 is not a large sum in the context of £1½ million, but it is substantial and it has the disadvantage, which should not be overlooked, of longer road occupation being required at times of surfacing and resurfacing.

The traffic figure for the Elephant and Castle is 49,000 vehicles a day. It is a very busy traffic junction, but although the right hon. Gentleman thought that the traffic at Hyde Park Corner was more the "fancy pants" style, it is nearly twice as heavy at 91,000 vehicles per day and many of those vehicles are commercial. I dare say that the proportion of commercial to private vehicles may be a little higher at the Elephant and Castle, but, in total, Hyde Park Corner is by far the busiest junction in London.

We felt that we ought to have as near a basis of comparison as possible, and we compared the traffic at Vauxhall Cross with that at the Elephant and Castle. The two are very comparable. The volume of traffic at Vauxhall Cross is slightly higher than at the Elephant and Castle, being 57,000 vehicles per day. I should have thought that there was quite as much commercial traffic and that the amount of turning was rather more than it will be at the reconstructed Elephant and Castle. We put down hot rolled asphalt at Vauxhall Cross in 1953, and there are no signs of distortion or strain at present. That is strong evidence to confirm that hot rolled asphalt is suitable for the Elephant and Castle.

It is true, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that mastic asphalt has been used in some places in London. It seems to go in fashions. It has been very much out of favour until recently. In the last year or so, it has been returning to favour. The reasons which I have mentioned, the laborious business of laying and resurfacing and so on, have been a deterrent in the past. Our general practice has been not to put down new mastic surfaces, except where they have been put before, unless conditions are materially changing. That is a fairly sensible policy to follow.

I can certainly assure the right hon. Gentleman that we look at each case on its merits. Our engineers looked at this carefully. We also appreciate that borough councils, as the future highway authorities, have a very strong interest in future maintenance costs. The more they can get the development authority, that is the L.C.C., to pay in putting down the surface with the longest possible life, the better it will be for them.

We feel that we must hold a reasonable balance between the two interests. I accept what the right hon. Gentleman said about the L.C.C. and its original proposal, that it should be a hot rolled asphalt surface, and that afterwards, when Southwark came along with its views, the L.C.C. stepped aside in a neutral fashion. I can roundly assure the right hon. Gentleman that the surface which we shall put down can carry the traffic which will go round that junction. We should not hesitate to spend a few thousand pounds more if we thought that that was needed. We are committing ourselves to huge sums of money in order to make this a really first-class job and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that what we are putting down will be fully adequate to carry the very heavy traffic at the junction.

If I may suggest it in this context, we ought to stick to either of the surfaces. The decision which is being taken is sound and I hope that after my explanation the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the balance between the two surfaces is very narrow and that we are right to stick to the one on which we have decided.

Mr. Isaacs

I am grateful for all the facts and figures which the hon. Gentleman has given. They will, I assure him, be considered by the maintenance authority, which may perhaps find some comfort in what he has said.