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Analysis of what is being done to cope with the increasing number of cars on our roads. Includes footage from London and Cumbernauld.
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Date: September 16, 2022
Analysis of what is being done to cope with the increasing number of cars on our roads. Includes footage from London and Cumbernauld.
source
What’s the name of the music on this video
Was this film narrated by Spotswood from Team America?
Oxford St development went well then
Wouldn't see many older people over about 50 on the streets now. Full of young hipsters and chavs in torn jeans.
Still haven’t reached 40 million cars in the UK, 57 years later. 35 million in 2020.
Jesus.. This little film reveals the dogged 1950s " improvement" mindset underpinning why whole swathes of Britain's ancient city centres were simply razed to the ground in the 1960s. At the time of this film in my home city of Glasgow planners and politicians were gleefully executing a scheme developed in the 1950s to trash a 6 lane motorway thro the heart of a largely Victorian city centre. They got their way. These people quite literally ripped the heart out of the city so that whole inner city communities which had grown over 100s of years vanished overnight under the M8. At the same time a parrarell " improvement" scheme was planned for Edinburgh which involved, amongst other things, running a motorway thro the Royal Mile. Fortunately for posterity the maniacs were stopped by a group of largely forgotten lay people who organised to prevent the madness we see in this film.
We knew we had an awful problem with our tiny island being so over crowded in 1964, and that steps had to be taken to tackle it.
Begs the question, why did we allow millions of immigrants to come here over the next 57 years ? We are having to cover this little island in concrete to provide extra roads and houses.One day we might require that land to grow food and store water in order to keep everyone alive.We are quickly running out of land,and if the pound devalues substantially imported food will be too expensive.
A second Mersey tunnel? I went to North Wales camping with my last boarding school – we went via Liverpool and under the Wallasey Tunnel – there’s also a Birkenhead Tunnel – are there any others? No doubt that some Scouser could answer that – I’m from Middlesbrough originally – now live in Somerset!
2021 and we still don't have this dream lol
6:02 o man that poor whacked Etype
Tunnels and elevated highways through city centers. Arid "modern" pedestrian plazas and concrete housing developments that become crime-ridden ghettos.
One planning disaster after another.
07:15 Peaceful coexistence between motorists and pedestrians.
Definition of pedestrian: A motorist who finally found a place to park his car.
Everything looked cleaner back then
And now we have 3/4 car families.
Cumbernauld bet none of the planners lived there .. its a shit hole .
Very prescient: now we have the congestion charge and the low emission zone to reduce the number of cars and their pollution. We also have families with two or three cars. And fuel duty +VAT as the major part of the petrol and diesel price. How did all that happen?
England was wonderful. Everything started to change in 1959.
All that wasted space set aside for car parking, making the places look ugly, cars cluttering everywhere spoiling views and just getting in the way
Love the part about Liverpool, those flyovers have just been demolished and the waterfront is an even bigger mess, it's been dug up for over a year causing misery and delays for all.
It's alright, don't panic, Ken Livingstone will solve the traffic problems in London of the future. It will get even better with Sadiq Khan.
wow they way over estimated how many cars would be on the road in 40 years
10 thousand million pounds. Lol
East Anglia was known as the salesman graveyard because of it's old roads back in the 1960s. It didn't even have a motorway if you wanted to drive to London, A11all the way, and the trains took 4 hours.
at 0:17 how it looks today
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5151002,-0.1432211,3a,75y,268.72h,79.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sa_UiYn7VR2m05hH-Qkd5Bg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en
fun fact at 2:07 he said they predicted 40 million cars within 40 years. In March 2020 the number of cars is at 38 million. Prediction off by 15 years and under 2 million cars.
Such optimism that never happened now we squeeze cars & put large bike lanes with no bikes using & cars crawling along one lane
Cumbernauld it's a shit hole ..
The street where the dustbin lorry is shown at 1:04 is the street I grew up in and the view at 1:11 even shows our front door. Thank you for posting this nostalgia.
When Cumbernauld was seen as Nirvana. The town centre on a deck turned out to be an epic eyesore!
Happy days when cyclists in central London were regarded as nutters and no road planner gave them a second thought.
Cumbernauld..
Livingston…
2 real shit holes
No BMW, Audi though there is a dkw, Nissan, Hyundai etc. The British motor industry was vibrant but strikes and complacency killed it.
Funny to see that big Yank Tank 1959 Ford in traffic among the little cars.
The UK will never ever tame the automobile. No room, no budget and no real will.
now here we are in 2019!
It is ironic that when this film was being made and shown, they were ripping up the railways all over the country. One side telling us the railways were ancient and not necessary in this modern age…..another side like this film telling us that the car situation is already getting out of hand and we need to plan for the future.