Royal Commission on London Traffic


The Royal Commission on London Traffic was a Royal commission established in 1903 with a remit to review and report on how transport systems should be developed for London and the surrounding area. It produced a report in eight volumes published in 1905 and made recommendations on the character, administration and routing of traffic in London.

Establishment

The Royal Commission on London Traffic was established on 10 February 1903. It had 13 commissioners and was chaired by Sir David Barbour. Its secretary was Lynden Macassey and the other commissioners were:
The Commission's remit was to report on London's traffic arrangements and:
as to measures which the Commission deem most effectual for the improvement of the same by the development and inter-connexion of Railways and Tramways on, or below, the surface; by increasing the facilities for other forms of mechanical locomotion; by better provision for the organization and regulation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, or otherwise;
as to the desirability of establishing some authority or tribunal to which all schemes of Railway or Tramway construction of a local character should be referred, and the powers which it could be advisable to confer on such a body.
The area of the Commission's scope covered the Metropolitan Police District, an area of and a population of more than 6.5 million in 1901. In its report the Commission described this as "Greater London" and the urban developed area at its centre as "the Metropolis". The area beyond the Metropolis was described as "Extra London".

Investigation

The Commission held 112 meetings and interviewed 134 witnesses. Members of the Commission carried out fact-finding visits to New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington in 1903 and to Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Cologne, Dresden, Berlin, Brussels and Paris in 1904.
An Advisory Board of three engineers was appointed to give the Commission technical advice. The board consisted of Sir John Wolfe Barry, Sir Benjamin Baker, former President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and William Barclay Parsons, Chief Engineer to the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners of the City of New York.

Report and recommendations

The Commission's Report, Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire Into and Report Upon the Means of Locomotion and Transport in London, was published in eight volumes on 17 July 1905.
The Report examined the historic development of road, rail and tram transportation and the current condition. It made recommendations for improvements to roads within London's central area and arterial roads; for improvements in tramways including new routes and for improvements in railways of all types including their connections to one another. Recommendations were made as on road traffic regulations and the Commission recommended the establishment of a Traffic Board to manage traffic developments in the Greater London area and carry out preliminary reviews of bills for traffic schemes before they were submitted to parliament.

Roads

The Report identified that road traffic was constrained by the narrowness of many of London's roads which reflected the historic development of the city.
The Report recommended that a comprehensive plan should be developed to improve road provision and routing to be carried out over the long term and that new roads should be constructed to standard widths depending on their importance and that existing main routes should be widened when possible.

Recommended road improvements

The Advisory Board recommended construction of two "Main Avenues". These would be wide between buildings with four tram lines on the road and four railway lines in a sub-surface tunnel immediately beneath. Two of the tram lines and two of the railway lines would be for express services and service tunnels would be provided for utilities beneath the wide pavements. The Main Avenues would connect areas on the outskirts of the main urban area and tramways and railway lines would be connected to these at both ends:
The Main Avenues would cross at Gray's Inn Road. Definitive routes were not proposed, but the Report recognised that the scale of the projects would require them to be carried out as a complete exercise. The cost of both Main Avenues was estimated to be £30 million for the of new roads, tramways and railways.
Other main road improvements recommended by the Advisory Board were:
The Report indicated that there were many other roads and junctions that required improvements including for main roads leading out of London. For the latter the Report recommended that this should be a responsibility for the Traffic Board to report on when established. Although it did not make any recommendations on the subjects, the Report noted that submissions made to the Commission, included suggestions for "making roads in different directions out of London", "constructing a circular road about 75 miles in length at a radius of 12 miles from St Paul's", "providing alternative streets parallel to crowded thoroughfares, and new streets" and "removing factories from London".

Tramways

The Report identified that the existing tramway systems were fragmented and lacked connections. Compared to other British cities, Greater London's tramway systems were significantly under-developed. The report criticised the London County Council's policy of refusing to allow the privately owned tramways operating outside the county's boundary to connect to and operate over its municipally owned system within. It also criticised the failure of the County to join its three separate systems together and to allow trams in the central areas of the City of London and the West End.
The Report recommended that interconnection of the existing tramways be undertaken and recommended construction of many new routes in areas not served and that through running of services between different operators be allowed. The Report recommended that vetos held by the London County Council and the municipal boroughs within it over the construction of new tramways should be abolished.
The Advisory Board recommended the construction of 23 new tramways to connect the separate systems and bring trams to unserved areas. It estimated that the cost of constructing double line tramways was four to five per cent of the cost of constructing a cut and cover line such as the Metropolitan Railway or 13 to 17 per cent of the cost of a deep-level tube line such as the Central London Railway.

Recommended tramway improvements

The new routes recommended by the Advisory Board were:
With the exception of Route 8 and the southern end of Route 1 and the northern parts of Routes 6 and 23 which crossed the county boundary, all of the routes were in the County of London.

Railways

The Report noted that the Commission considered that the purpose of railways was to bring passengers from the residential districts into the urban centre. A survey of traffic usage calculated the estimated total number of journeys for 1903 as 310,662,501.
Within the urban centre, trams and buses were considered to be the most convenient form of mass transport. The Commission excluded railway goods traffic from its consideration noting only that the distribution of most retail goods within the centre on London was by road as the railways could not compete due to convenience and cost. A desire was expressed that this was better organised to reduce its contribution on traffic congestion, but no solution was proposed.
The Report noted that most suburban and long distance passengers arrived at the same termini and that government policy of prohibiting railways from entering central London meant that the many railway companies then in operation had developed a messy network of lines in the periphery to connect to one another. The Report noted that the Commission considered the way in which the termini had been located around the central area and the way that the railway companies' lines had been connected to one another were the main causes of deficiencies in the railways.
The Commission set itself three questions with regard to the provision of railways: were additional railways needed in the London area and should they be deep-level, sub-surface or surface lines; were the existing suburban rail services sufficient and was special encouragement or assistance needed for future railway construction.

Recommended railway improvements

The Report noted that deep-level underground lines under construction or planned would provide additional connections with many of the termini not already connected which would facilitate passengers' onward journeys into the central area. It considered that these new lines would mitigate many of the existing problems, but recommended that connections between north-south and east-west lines be provided and that connections between the suburban networks on the east and west sides of the central area be improved including by way of the Main Avenues proposed for the road and tram improvements. The only new deep-level line recommended was from Victoria station northwards to alleviate what was expected to remain a problem for passengers travelling into the central area. The Report recommended that a north-south line be provided from Victoria to Marble Arch where the approved but unbuilt North West London Railway was to terminate.
To improve east-west connections, the Advisory Board recommended connecting Hammersmith to the City of London via Kensington, Piccadilly and the Strand either by an underground railway or as a tramway.
The other main recommendation was that construction of railways in London should continue to be funded by private enterprise, but that parliament should provide a favourable system of procedures to encourage bills to be promoted as easily as possible. The commission also recommended that parliament should avoid imposing additional financial burdens on the proposals, such as the cost of reconstructing roads and should allow railway companies to buy land around their proposed new extensions in order to benefit from the increase in land prices and to profit from the new services they provide.

Traffic Board

The Report identified the need for a unified system for the "general control of measures affecting locomotion and transport in London", but considered it inappropriate for any of the existing authorities within the region to fulfil this role or for it to be established as a committee composed of representatives of the multiple authorities. It, therefore, recommended that a new authority, a "Traffic Board", be established. The Report recommended that the board partially replace the existing parliamentary process of scrutinising private bills for transport proposals in the Greater London area. The Report's recommendation was that the board should have the powers for:
With regards to the construction of new transport systems, The Report considered that the Traffic Board might function in a similar supervisory capacity to the Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners of New York or the Rapid Transit Commission of Boston.
The Report recommended that The Traffic Board should have a chairman and two to three other members. Because of the small number of members, The Report considered nomination by the local authorities within the Greater London area to be inappropriate as not all would be represented. Therefore the board's members should be directly appointed by the government.
The costs of the board should be covered by a fees and a levy on the local authorities within the Greater London area paid from the local rates.

Minority reports

Two of the Commission's members issued their own reports; a third member issued an additional recommendation. Bartley felt that the main report did not go far enough in its recommendations and he wanted the full adoption of the Advisory Board's recommendation for the construction of a pair of grand avenues. Dimsdale, rejected the main report's recommendation for tram routes in central London. Gibb's additional recommendation was that part of the route of the then under construction Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway should be merged with a planned route from the Central London Railway to form a looping line.

Afterwards

The Report's recommendations were acted on in a limited manner. The recommendation for an all-encompassing Traffic Board was not adopted, although the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee was established in 1924 to oversee road traffic in the London Traffic Area.
Amongst the recommendations for road improvements, the new east-west and north-south Main Avenues were not constructed. A number of the proposed road improvements were carried out:
The tramway system was gradually improved into a more integrated system. By the mid-1910s, the three independent tram companies were owned by the London and Suburban Traction Company which was jointly owned by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and British Electric Traction.
Review and approval of all new railway lines or extensions to existing lines continued to be carried out by parliament. The three underground lines under construction at the time the Commission sat opened in 1906 and 1907 and were owned, along with the District Railway, by the. From 1913, the also controlled the Central London Railway and the City and South London Railway. Extensions of all of the lines were proposed and built during the 1910s to 1930s. From 1910, the also owned the largest bus company in London, the London General Omnibus Company.
Consolidation of the mainline railway companies continued and under the Railways Act 1921 they were merged into the Big Four in 1923. Under the London Passenger Transport Act 1933, the, the Metropolitan Railway, the municipal tram operators and all bus operators in the London region were amalgamated under the single control of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1934.
Further studies that considered the improvement of traffic in London were carried out. Sir Charles Bressey with Sir Edwin Lutyens considered road improvements in The Highway Development Survey and Sir Patrick Abercrombie's County of London Plan and Greater London Plan included recommendations on rail and road transport.