NEW ROADS FOR ENGLAND.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16805, 11 August 1925, Page 10

NEW ROADS FOR ENGLAND.

GREAT NATIONAL ENTERPRISE.

In 1910 a National Road Board Was created. The Board had power to build new roads or to help local authorities to do so. It had power also io> acquire land 220 yards on either side of the centre of such roads. The Board was slow to make use of these novel powers. It entered into arrangements with the Middlesex County Council for the con-: struction of the Great West road from Chiswick to beyond Hounslow, and with the Croydon Borough , Council for the construction of a road from ■ Thorndon Heath to Burley to by-pass Croydon. These wore its principal contributions to new roads in the Greater London am. Outside Londoh ‘it arranged for the reconstruction of the Roman Fosse Way between Leicester and Newark, and for a new bridgb in conjunction with ,n railway bridge across the r l).rait at Kcudby, \\vhieTi provided a direct route from Grimsby and North Lincolnshire to South Yorkshire. In 1919 the Ministry of Transport was formed. It absorbed tin? Road Board. Its formation synchronised -with a period of trade depression. The Government df the day therefore turned to road building as a means of relief for the unemployed. New schemes of road construction were pushed forward. ' Ampilg these was the London-Southern! road, opened recently by Prince Henry. lin the * Greater London area the twcnty-seiven schemes either completed or now in. hand comprise in all about 165 miles of entirely new construction and forty miles of widenings. ) The total estimated cost is over twenty million pounds. Of the 205 miles of new and widened roads. 107 are now open for traffic. The Great Wmt road, which was formerly opened by the King..on May 30, is eight miles long and 120 feet wide between the fences. The carriageway is fifty feet. Notwithstanding this large expenditure of money, there is still -much remaining to bei done. Among the most urgent of the schemes now undcir consideration are, first, the linking up of the Great West rout} and the Western avenue with the Eastern, avenue and the Southend road, so as 1q give London another east and west route which will relieve.the congestion on Oxford street and Fleet street and past the Bank of England; fund, second, improved road access from the City to the docks —the Silvertown art® of West Ham.

In the provinces, the most, important now roads completed, or under construction, ard the Eastington-,Hartlepool road : the Birmingham-mil vcirhiimplon road ; the Newrasllo-Tynemoulh road; the Bristol-Avonmouth road; the new road and bridge at Galvorley, near Leeds; as well as new roads in the suburbs of Blackburn, Bradford. Bolton, Manchester, and South Shields,