HC Deb 23 April 1963 vol 676 cc177-88

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. I. Eraser.]

11.1 p.m.

Mr. G. W. Reynolds (Islington, North)

I welcome the opportunity, after a whole day dealing with local government matters—particularly at the end of it, dealing with town and country planning—to talk about something rather analogous to town and country planning—traffic. I wish to refer, in particular, to the traffic in my own constituency, which at present is going through that area at the rate of many thousands of vehicles a day.

The proposals which the Minister of Transport is making will increase the number of heavy vehicles going through my constituency. I can say without fear of contradiction that they are deliberately designed to increase the number of heavy vehicles going through my constituency, with particular effect on one section of the lorry route which the Minister is proposing, namely, the area in my constituency round Archway Junction. The Minister proposes in due course to try to persuade lorry drivers to follow a prescribed route from the M.1 into the centre of London to the docks and the markets. This route will take these vehicles right through the Borough of Islington—through my constituency and the constituencies of my hon. Friends who represent the southern part of the borough.

I first heard of that part, of the proposals which affect my constituency at the beginning of April, 1962, when one of my local borough councillors said to me that the Minister was proposing a one-way scheme taking all northbound traffic in Holloway Road up Highgate Hill and all southbound traffic down the Archway Road. When I first heard of it—and that was all I knew of it—I thought that it sounded a reasonably sound proposition; with two main roads one would have the southbound traffic going in one direction and the northbound traffic on the other road going in the other direction. I am not in general opposed to one-way traffic schemes.

But that was when I heard the first intimation of this proposal. On 18th April last year I saw the full details and found that the scheme went a great deal wider than using those two main roads for carrying traffic, one for northerly traffic and the other for traffic in a southerly direction. It in fact involved a diversion of 12,500 vehicles between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. through a completely residential road in my constituency, a road which at the moment is used simply and purely by occasional light traffic serving the district and buses going from the main road into the garage situated two-thirds of the way along it. Pemberton Gardens was, on the whole, a quiet road, not greatly used. The odd vehicle would cut through from Junction Road, but not many vehicles used it. I admit that it is quite wide, but nevertheless it contains almost entirely residential property, a church and a school, and has a bus depot at one end.

The reason which the Minister gave for this idea of a lorry route and this diversion forming part of it was that the real problem which he had to tackle in that part of the route was the traffic congestion on Archway Road. On 18th April, he said that the one-way working proposed for the length of the lorry route between the Great North Road and Archway would, of course, cause some inconvenience. He said, "It is, however, considered essential to relieve Archway Road. There is no other practical means of doing it as a short-term measure." That was the attitude of the Minister on 18th April; it was essential to have this one-way traffic scheme at Archway Road and the Junction primarily to relieve the Archway Road, and he said that the traffic signals there would be abolished by the introduction of the scheme.

On 15th May, the Minister, in reply to a letter from me, referred to what he called "this large one-way system" and again said that it was essential to relieve Archway Road until it could be widened. He said: I can see no other practical means of doing it as a short-term measure. So far, everything to do with the lorry route there has been related to the essential job that had to be done to relieve congestion in Archway Road.

On 3rd July, again in reply to correspondence, the Minister wrote saying: The reason for including Junction Road in the scheme is that one-way working in Archway Road—Highgate Hill would not itself simplify the traffic pattern at the Archway Junction enough to give us the increase in the Junction's capacity which we need. But still the other one-way diversions were to add to the quite considerable improvement that the Minister anticipated would come about by using these as one-way streets. I believe that the other rearrangements of the Archway Junction were originally intended as a by-product of the major scheme using Highgate Hill for northbound traffic and Archway Road for southbound traffic.

Then there was a lot of agitation in Highgate and a large number of deputations were formed and meetings held, and suddenly, on 28th January of this year, the Minister completely changed his proposals for the lorry route in that particular part of my constituency, in the area just immediately north of it. It was apparently no longer essential, in order to relieve congestion on the Archway Road, to divert 50 per cent, of the traffic up Highgate Hill.

The Minister decided, for a number of reasons, that he would not include Highgate Hill but would still have two streams of traffic using Archway Road. So the Minister first said that it was the only short-term means by which it was feasible to relieve congestion in Archway Road and then, almost overnight, turned round and dropped that part of the scheme designed as being the only means available to him to relieve congestion in the Archway Road itself. I suggest that this major part of the scheme was dropped for the subsidiary part which was primarily intended to allow traffic to get easily into Highgate Hill and so allow traffic coming down Archway Road not to get muddled up with that in Highgate Hill.

In my constituency, the subsidiary part, the utilising of residential roads, is still to be continued, and in my view the Minister has made the position even worse by bringing two completely residential roads into the scheme and splitting the traffic to go on both Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove, where originally the traffic would split, some going on Highgate Hill and some up Archway Road. Now some of the traffic still goes up Archway Road, but before it gets from there to Holloway Road it has to make a detour.

First, at the corner of Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove it has to do a left-hand turn, and then it comes to a zebra crossing, put there to allow people to get over the road at the joining with Holloway Road. I agree that there must be either police or other traffic control there to allow pedestrians to get across the junction where Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove meet Holloway Road, especially at the rush periods.

Having proceeded over the zebra crossing, where it is bound to be interrupted quite considerably, the traffic must filter through all the traffic from the north and east which intends to go west, and into Holloway Road. Then, within 50 yards, it has to go over a two-stage signal-controlled crossing at the junction of Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove, and then it has to turn right and filter through all the traffic proceeding east or south at the Archway. Then it will have to wait at the lights at Archway Junction before merging into one stream in Archway Road, which is the "essential" problem all this was at first designed to deal with. Presumably there will have to be some form of traffic control there—either police-controlled or some traffic lights—and then the traffic will have to proceed to Archway Junction where again it will be caught by traffic lights, and at least two streams of traffic will be pushed into the Archway Road, which was the cause of all the trouble at the beginning, and will have to condense into one stream of traffic.

I understand that there is to be a minor amount of road widening carried out along the Archway Road, but there will still be bus stops there, and however many vehicles line up there to proceed northwards, in the majority of cases they will have to converge from two or three streams into one stream to get up Archway Road.

I cannot see that the Minister, having abandoned the main proposal to use Highgate Hill for northbound traffic and Archway Road for southbound traffic, will gain anything by keeping the minor diversion in being. He will merely be separating the traffic lower down, to go up Highgate Hill, which is not going up Highgate Hill at the moment. The vast bulk of the traffic will, however, go up the Archway Road. I do not see that he gains anything by sorting out all the traffic before it gets to Archway Junction, when it has got to converge together again.

I know that the Minister will claim that he gains the advantage of having got two phases of traffic lights instead of four, but the vehicles proceeding northwards have still got two phases. They have got two pedestrian crossings, one controlled by traffic lights at the junction of Pemberton Gardens and another at the top of Pemberton Gardens, so that they are almost certain to have the equivalent of four phases by the time they have done the circuitous route to get on to Archway Road again. While I admit that I could see certain advantages in this arrangement while the original proposal was in being, I find it impossible to see any great advantages from the traffic point of view in the proposal as it now stands, when the traffic has to be funnelled up the Archway Road.

I understand that on this particular part of the lorry route there will be an increase of 4 per cent, or 5 per cent, in the number of vehicles using the route. The number of extra lorries which will be channelled up the Archway Road and on up the hill may be 500 more per day in each direction; 500 will go through these two completely residential roads. To do this on a temporary basis, the Islington Borough Council estimates that £140,000 has got to be spent before the lorry route can be introduced. That is a capital expenditure of £140 for every additional lorry that is going along there. That is a considerable amount of capital expenditure for the additional lorries which will be brought on to this route.

So far as Archway Road is concerned, this will mean that an additional 1,000 heavy lorries per day will be encouraged to use a section of road which in his original statements the Minister said it is impossible to use at the present moment and which it will be necessary to improve unless Highgate Hill is used as well. Now he has abandoned the Highgate Hill proposal, but is still going to bring 500 extra lorries up Archway Road.

St. John's Road and Pemberton Gardens consist mainly of old Victorian-type property, some of it in good condition, but some, according to the owners of the property, the Corporation of Sons of the Clergy, an offshoot of the Church Commissioners, is not in too good condition, and they are very concerned with its state. They have been doing their best to improve the general standard of the estate, all of which is owned by them, and they are particularly concerned at the Minister's proposal to bring these lorries through. The owners and the residents in the area are concerned about the noise and the vibration which will come from putting 12,500 vehicles, with an additional 500 lorries, making a total of 13,000 vehicles a day, through these residential roads.

When I originally raised the matter of vibration in correspondence with the Minister earlier this year, he did not seem to think much of the argument which I put to him about the effect on property and the residents in the area, and he referred me in his reply to the Building Research Station Digest No. 78, on which, apparently, he relies in this matter. I can only say that I am not at all satisfied that the Minister is founding his attitude on a very good case in this document, because it makes perfectly clear in terms that The question of what constitutes damaging vibration is not easy to answer with absolute certainty in all cases", and says—I think this is true—that someone walking about in a house or slamming a door probably causes more vibration than what are referred to as "external services".

However, I see that most of the information on which this report was based was gained from surveys carried out on road traffic and the underground system in the London area in the 1920s, experiments on the effect of vibration on human beings in Germany in 1931, and a number of experiments carried out by the research station itself between 1947 and 1955.

Occasionally, in a house, a door is slammed or someone walks heavily across a floor, but we are talking here about continuous vibration throughout 24 hours in the day caused by the lorries, buses and other vehicles passing through Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Road. The total amount of vibration produced by all those vehicles will very greatly exceed any amount of vibration the buildings could suffer from the occasional slamming door or person walking heavily across the bedroom floors.

Now, noise. A few months ago, I addressed a meeting in the Archway Methodist Central Hall. All the traffic at present going past the Central Hall in a northerly direction will be diverted through these residential roads, with an additional 1,000 lorries. In addressing that meeting, I had to stop every few minutes and wait for a lorry to go by because I could not be heard above the noise of its passing. This was in a public hall where, perhaps, the effect is not quite so bad. However, that is the sort of noise which will, for 24 hours each day, affect Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove where hundreds of my constituents, many of them old people, will have to live, eat and sleep.

If one buys or rents property on a main road, one expects traffic. However, in a residential road, one does not expect suddenly to have 12,000 or more vehicles diverted past one's door. There is also the problem of the St. John's Primary School, which has premises on both sides of the road. It will continue to have premises on both sides of the road, judging from the building programme of the Minister of Education, for several years to come. The children have to cross the road for assembly, for meals and for parts of their instruction. They will in future have to cross it when it has 12,000 vehicles passing through.

Every church in the area of this particular one-way system is opposed to the Minister's proposal. All the political parties in the area are opposed to it, including the Minister's own party, one of the officers of which is a vice-president of the tenants' association in the area which has protested at what is proposed. The Islington Borough Council opposes the Minister's plan and communicated its views to him recently, I understand. The ratepayers of Islington are, on the whole, opposed to it because, according to the figures the Borough Council worked out, out of the total cost of introducing the scheme £45,000 will have to be found by the ratepayers of the borough. The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy, the owners of the freehold of the property in the area itself, has written to me, through its agents, expressing its opposition. The residents of the area are opposed to it, and I was disappointed that, after I had written to the Minister three weeks ago asking him to receive a deputation from them, he replied recently refusing to meet such a deputation. I shall have to communicate with him again about that in the near future.

I myself am opposed to the scheme because, although I agree with one-way systems generally, I regard it as completely wrong in this case and in all similar cases—I shall be in touch with the Minister on another case in the near future—to take thousands of vehicles through what are at present residential streets, bringing them off the main roads which were originally intended for them. It is wrong to put a large volume of heavy traffic through residential streets which are not constructed to carry the weight of vehicles which will be forced through them if the Minister's proposal is carried out.

I hope that the Minister will have another look at this proposal before proceeding any further. Everyone concerned is against it. He has abandoned the main part of the, diversion which this smaller diversion was primarily intended to serve. If he is not to go ahead with the major diversion, he might just as well let the traffic go on as it is doing and press for the real solution—the rebuilding of Archway Junction, which I understand would cost about £1 million. There is no sign of this being started and he should get it going within the next few months.

11.20 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)

From time to time, I have ventured to drop the observation that life is hard in the Ministry of Transport. I must say that the speech of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) shows just how hard our job is. Few of the London traffic management schemes we have been trying to carry out in recent years have caused so much rumpus as this one for a lorry route. At the outset of the few remarks I now have time for, I want to emphasise the reason why we wanted and still want a lorry route.

We originally conceived this idea because of the rapid growth of goods traffic on the roads, which has been particularly marked in London. Between 1954 and 1960, it went up by 90 per cent., an average of 11 per cent, a year. This growth of commercial goods traffic goes on. The object of our lorry route proposals, which we first announced in April last year, was to provide on an experimental basis a route which would be attractive for vehicles between the M.1 and the A.1 and the inner docks and markets and East London, a route which would avoid the town centres of St. Albans and Barnet and the City of London.

As a subsidiary measure, our proposals included the prohibition of the use of many city streets as through routes for heavy goods vehicles with the object of removing congestion in the City over large parts of the route, including the main part through Islington. Our aim was not, despite what the hon. Member says, so much to attract more lorries to the route as to improving the conditions on the route for the very heavy concentration which includes not only lorries but also other vehicles and pedestrians.

On some parts of the route, the effect would have been to transfer some of the traffic from heavily congested routes, roads or junctions on to roads which have been relatively quiet, which is completely in line with the policy of the Minister as frequently enunciated in the House and which has generally received the endorsement of the House, namely, that while traffic congestion continues and until major improvements can be made, the best use of the existing streets in our towns should be our objective.

If the loads are there they should be fully used for moving traffic. It was not intended that this lorry route should be made compulsory. It was intended that, by traffic engineering measures, we should make one route so attractive to drivers that, with the encouragement of various associations and organisations representing road hauliers, they would use it voluntarily instead of other more congested routes.

We put forward these proposals on a comprehensive basis in 1962 and received a large number of representations. Most of the councils concerned opposed us violently. There were a great many other bodies of varying degrees of importance who equally reacted with violence. We received a large number of complaints from residents and other people in the area and, since this is a democratic country, the Minister took every note of these representations and in January of this year announced that he did not propose to proceed with the original proposals but would instead, in deference to the objections, make modifications. He announced a new series of proposals, and these are the ones which now hold the floor. We have now received comments from councils and from the public, including the representations made in letter, in Questions and now in debate by the hon. Member. These are now all under consideration.

May I now say a word about the arguments which are sometimes put forward on this matter? It is said, and I think that the hon. Member has said so again tonight, that if these proposals go through life will be extremely difficult for residents in these areas. I do not for a moment overlook the human considerations which are involved. I do not deny that these roads—and some of them are largely residential, and one has a school in it—will be busier under these proposals than they have been and that that is bound to mean some inconvenience for residents. But our experience throughout London and elsewhere has shown that, although it is quite natural for people to tend to fear the effects of traffic schemes before they are brought into force, when they are brought into force and people have experience of them, in many cases they realise that their former fears were either largely groundless or exaggerated.

It is for this reason that my right hon. Friend has adopted the practice of introducing major traffic schemes on an experimental basis. He first sends details to the local councils and other representative bodies concerned and he publishes them in the Press. He then reviews the proposals in the light of any representations received and then, if it seems right to go on, he introduces the scheme, perhaps in a modified form and for an experimental period. That gives everybody a chance to see how the thing works and what effects it really has as opposed to the effects which are expected. Before he decides finally to continue a scheme in operation indefinitely, either in its original or modified form, he considers a report which is based on the observations of its working by our expert traffic management people in the Ministry of Transport.

This is the procedure which we have followed so far with the lorry route proposals. We firmly believe that an experimental period of operation of this part of the proposal will show that the effects are nothing like as detrimental as some local people fear and that the scheme is in the best public interest as an interim measure until such time as the major road improvements which the hon. Member mentioned can be carried out.

The hon. Member mentioned the figure of 12,500 vehicles a day as being likely to use these roads. That sounds an awful lot. It is certainly more than the number using the roads now, but it is not an excessive flow for Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove to share because nearly twice that volume already passes through the narrow Highgate High Street where there are also schools and residential properties. This flow is similar to the present flow in other largely residential roads in the hon. Member's own constituency and elsewhere. St. Paul's Road and Englefield Road are examples of roads even narrower than St. John's Grove and Pemberton Gardens.

I do not propose to go into a lot of detail about the safety of pedestrians and the various measures which the proposals contain to look after that aspect of traffic, except to say that the hon. Member criticised the pedestrian crossing which we have it in mind to provide at the junction of Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove. This is to be a signal-controlled crossing and we are putting it there for the safety of the pupils at the primary school nearby. Of course it will have the effect of slowing up traffic to some extent, but that is the price which we must pay for the safety of the school children.

There is also the complaint about noise. It is true that in Pemberton Gardens and St. John's Grove there will be more noise than there is now and I am afraid that there is not a great deal which can be done about it. But on the other side of the balance sheet there may well be less noise in other parts of Holloway Road and Junction Road, and that has to be taken into account.

It is not true, as has been said not only tonight but elsewhere, that the scheme will bring traffic chaos. To some extent we have to depend on our experts who advise us. They know the sort of problems with which they are dealing. They have the experience and they are satisfied that this is a good scheme for both vehicles and pedestrians. I do not think that in practice we will find that there will be any serious problem of traffic control.

As I have said, at the moment these are only proposals. No decision has been taken on them and the Minister has been very unwilling to come to a decision without having the views of the Islington Borough Council. Those views were received only this afternoon and of course they will be very fully studied. My right hon. Friend appreciates that the council as a local authority has to look after local interests and he would not expect it to welcome those aspects of the proposals which are not particularly attractive locally. But I hope that it will have regard to the wider considerations of the public interest and that, notwithstanding its doubts as a local authority, it will as a highway authority co-operate by doing the work necessary to give the scheme a trial. If it will not do that, it will be for the Minister to decide whether in the light of what it says he should use the powers which Parliament has given to him to put the scheme into experimental operation.

Finally, I would treat with some reserve the figures of possible expenditure by the borough council which the hon. Member mentioned. Our officials are in touch with the borough officials on that aspect of the matter, I understand, but I do not completely accept the figures which the hon. Member has given.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Twelve o'clock.