From the archive: London traffic on stilts

From The Times: August 21, 1924
‘Lord Montagu’s article on London traffic today will probably exceed all expectations of a heroic remedy. He is blest with unlimited imagination. Recognizing the impossibility, except at an enormous cost, of widening the main thoroughfares of London, and dismissing current suggestions for relief as short-term palliatives, he would take us and our cars and our lorries and all our long-distance traffic into the air.
He has a vision of roadways 60ft broad and 200ft above the ground, supported on colossal piers, some of which would have to be used as lifts to take vehicles up and down, while others, being mere sustainers, could be built in the form of residential flats, earning rents which would contribute to the cost of the whole undertaking. He has worked his scheme out in detail, both from the engineering and the financial point of view, and on aesthetic grounds he is enthusiastic over the possibilities. The escalator is a superb mass of solidity, and the roadway, for its width and airiness, is the motorists’ paradise.
Remembering what pessimists have said in the past about such projected novelties as the first railway and the Crystal Palace, one hardly likes to raise objections. Yet the thought of a network of such roads stretching high over our heads and our housetops cannot but be disconcerting.
The feeling of most people will probably be that there is a limit to which logic may lead. The experiment is bound to be costly and will cost not only money, but light and sky space. The effect of the overhead roads on the amenities of the streets and sites underneath must be highly problematic. There can be no assurance that they will not create difficulties of their own, if not actually overhead, at the foot of the escalators. The system might, in fact, become in a few years little more than a despised palliative. And is unimpeded speed always as essential as motorists declare it to be? Many private cars undoubtedly convey persons whose presence at any particular spot at any particular moment is of no real importance.
Most Londoners do not keep cars. A new tube has been begun, but like every new form of transport, it may encourage fresh travellers as well as serve existing needs. The conclusion appears to be that London must reconcile itself to going slow.
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