Traffic in towns : a study of the long term problems of traffic urban areas. Reports of the steering group and working group appointed by the Minister of Transport.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Transport.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Traffic in towns : a study of the long term problems of traffic urban areas. Reports of the steering group and working group appointed by the Minister of Transport. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/248 (page 41)
    99. The design problem, essentially, is a matter of rationalising the arrangement of buildings and access ways. At the extreme this can be seen to encompass the strategic rearrangement of activities to get them into better relationships. Examples would be to remove a wholesale market from an overcrowded centre, to remove a petrol filling station from a busy shopping street, or to get dwellings and workplaces into improved relative positions. All this should form an important aspect of town planning policy, as should the converse need to prevent new, undesirable relation- ships arising as a result of new development. But there is still a need to discern some basic principle for the design of buildings and access ways in order to secure good accessibility and environment. The basic principle 100. Fortunately there is no mystery about this, because the problem is no different in its essentials from the circulation problem that arises every day in the design of buildings, where the subject is well understood. The basic principle is the simple one of circulation, and is illustrated by the familiar case of corridors and rooms. Within a large hospital, for example, there is a complex traffic problem. A great deal of movement is involved— patients arrive at reception, are moved to wards, then perhaps to operating theatres and back to wards. Doctors, consultants, sisters and nurses go their rounds. Food, books, letters, medicines and appliances of many kinds have to be distributed. A good deal of this includes wheeled-traffic. The principle on which it is all contrived is the creation of areas of environment (wards, operating theatres, consulting rooms, laboratories, kitchens, libraries, etc.) which are served by a corridor system for the primary distribution of traffic. This is not to say no movement takes place within the areas of environment, since even in a hospital ward there is a drift of movement up and down the ward, but it is strictly controlled so that the environment does not suffer. If for some reason movement tends to build up beyond the ability of the environment to accept it, then something is quickly done to curtail or divert it. The one thing that is never allowed to happen is for an environmental area to be opened to through traffic—food trolleys being trundled through the operating theatre would indicate a fundamental error in circulation planning. 101. There is no principle other than this on which to contemplate the accommodation of motor traffic in towns and cities, whether it is a design for a new town on an open site, or the adaptation of an existing town. heavy traffic into streets where, environmentally, it is quite unsuitable. (This scene is viewed from a house- holder’s front door). a toe — food | + 3 = 1 operatingstheatre 9°] a visitors © Q. ro) go. = a 55 Atypical circulation diagram for a hospital. supplies casualties