ABSTRACT
Brief reference was made in chapter 1 to the spate of proposals for railway construction in central London in the 1840s and 1860s, and to the government's unavoidable intervention and large-scale prohibition of such schemes. It was argued that although from this time governments have been increasingly involved in regulating and guiding urban transport investment and services, until the Second World War this involvement was intermittent, partial and, it is probably fair to say, reluctant. Normally it was a reaction to a particularly pressing problem which had become a volatile and topical political issue. In other words, while there has been at least a century of government regulation in specific fields of urban transport, only during the last two decades have more positive management and planning policies developed. Gradually, but with increasing pace since the early 1960s, policies have extended from dealing separately with the different forms of urban transport, or even with one element of a mode, such as the construction of roads, towards a more coordinated policy for the different forms. Very recently, with the increased recognition of the needs of non-vehicular movements, of the social benefits and disbenefits of transport by various means, and of the environmental and social implications of transport policies, it can be argued that, at least in intention, we are closer than ever before to a system of comprehensive planning, in which transport is treated as an interdependent part. Furthermore, the 1974 Local Government Act gave heightened transport planning responsibilities to the new metropolitan and ‘shire’ county councils which, by retaining their role as the strategic physical planning authorities and through reformed and more flexible exchequer financing, gave them the means to practise more comprehensive and integrated environmental planning. As will be discussed towards the end of this chapter, what remains to be seen is whether these wide-ranging institutional reforms can be effective. This will depend on the very considerable questions of whether sufficient resources will be available for investment and to support unprofitable elements of the transport system, whether both planners and ‘the planned’ can reach sufficient consensus to enable the necessarily long-term plans to reach fruition, and whether professional, administrative and executive skills can be raised to enable the effective operation of the greatly expanded planning agencies.
