Engineering the Environment c.1900–1970: Congestion, Meters and Redefining the Urban Landscape

Abstract

It is axiomatic to suggest that the motorised vehicle transformed the urban landscape of Britain between 1900 and 1970. Motor cars were not designed for the British roads of the early twentieth century, which were often rutted, narrow and winding, lacking clearly designated pavements, and open to many forms of competing road users. The obvious incongruity of cars on roads suitable only for nineteenth-century traffic, combined with the rapid increase in automobile numbers, and resultant road congestion and noise pollution, dramatically increased the existing traffic problems of many towns and added significantly to road deaths and injuries. Photographs of town centres in the 1920s and 1930s testify to the confusion of traffic flow on the roads that forced the second Labour government (1929–1931) to introduce The Highway Code in 1931. The fact is that there were different speed limits operating for cars, for buses, trams and other road users, which were in conflict with each other and the slow pace of the pedestrian, the cyclist and the horse. Irate car owners honked their horns to add to an incredible cacophony of sound in Britain’s urban centres. Indeed, the Daily Mail mounted a campaign in the late 1920s to reduce noise pollution in London, in conjunction with the Columbia Gramophone Company, which made two records of London Street Noises — Leicester Square and London Street Noises — Beauchamp Place, Brompton Road on 11 and 20 September 1928.⁴