GLASS ROADS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 125, 19 February 1921, Page 7

GLASS ROADS

TORD MONTAGU’S VISION OF MOTOR EXPRESSES.

“Five years hence there will probably be about 2.000,000 motor vehicles of all kinds in this country, as pre-sent-dav estimate of about <50,000, de clared L<cd Montagu of Beaulieu at a meeting of the Institute of Transport in London. . . If the road traffic increases at anything like the present -rate, he went on, the width of many of our most-used main roads would have to be doubled before long to take at least four lines of traffic. Advocating new trunk roads between busy centres, Lord Montagu said these must be special roads on which mechanical transport would be freed from speed limits. He thought the railway companies had missed a unique opportunity in failing to provide roads for the new traffic either above, below or at the side of railway tracks. The provision of by-pass roads to avoid towns would do away with the reason underlying the wise and inevitable reduction of speed of fen miles per hour in narrow streets. , In holiday times in the near future we- should see advertisements of motorcoaches leaving all ?Yie principal towns for destinations up to 200 and 300 miles away. Railways were already beginning to “feel the draughf" both in passenger and goods traffic. To withstand this heavy traffic special roads would be made of some permanent or semi-permanent material, perhaps glass or concrete, and when these were made the average . speed of passenger-carrying motors would be equal to, if noi in excess of, average railway passenger speeds to-day.