A WHOLE GENERATION of drivers has now grown up in the motorway age: knowing nothing of a time when long journeys involved navigating through every town and village en route; when a trip up the A1 meant getting jammed solid in York, Doncaster and Newcastle. Motorways and by-passes, of course, allow us to travel from one end of the country to the other in splendid isolation: totally divorced from our surroundings. Perhaps that's why our minor roads now have such a nostalgic appeal. Roads that twist and undulate; roads that have real corners and less than perfect surfaces.
In parts of mainland Britain it's still possible to conjure up an image of an earlier era of motoring. Not, admittedly, of the pioneer days - when roughly laid stone top-dressing broke up under motorised wheels to create choking clouds of white dust - but certainly of pre-war conditions. There are places in this country where it's still a real joy to drive: where heavy traffic is confined to major trunk routes and the country lanes are still relatively empty; where driving demands more skill than merely staying awake at the wheel. And if you are lucky enough to be able to explore such rural backwaters in an interesting, older vehicle, then the time-warp factor is nearly complete.
Unfortunately though, the highway engineers seem to have set themselves the task of 'improving' the byways of Britain. They evidently believe that our quality of life is unbearable without concrete kerbstones, yellow-bordered road signs and precisely radiused bends. These people have no sense of either romance or aesthetics, sadly. Their narrow vision starts and finishes on the drawing-board. They've already destroyed most of Southern England and the Midlands, and they're hell-bent on imposing their standardised conformity throughout the rest of the land.
Joni Mitchell sang, 'We don't know what we've got 'till it's gone' Well, it takes a trip through some of the remaining 'unspoilt countryside' to bring home the damage that's been wrought elsewhere. And every concrete kerbstone, each unnecessary sign, pushes that idyllic rural scene one step closer to carefully controlled, artificially-lit uniformity. Remember that the spreading suburbs that leak out from our towns were originally fields. The 'shed-architecture' of business-parks has been dumped on to what were once real parks, containing trees and wild animals.
The government has recently accelerated this process by relaxing planning-law and allowing unprecedented incursion into the green-belt. The latest proposal is the de-regulation of road-side signs. We've already had a multiplicity of new 'official' warning signs: speed cameras, unmarked police cars operating, xxx accidents last year, 30 mph limit about to start in 300/200/100 yards time, etc., etc. (In fact, I'm waiting for the sign that says 'Warning - warning signs for 1 mile'!) But, in addition to that lot, we're soon going to get commercial outfits advertising their wares on giant billboards, just like America.
Ironically, our post-war planning legislation was formulated largely to avoid the horrors of unregulated, American-style, road-side development. And, considering that 'safety' seems to be the current motoring buzzword, it seems curious that drivers will be persuaded to divert their attention from the road itself in order to interpret a forest of signs - some imparting vital traffic information, others merely a exhortation to 'Eat at Fred's'.
We can't turn the clock back - we need motorways, and motorways need fast feeder roads. But we also have to face the unavoidable truth that major roads create major unpleasantness in terms of environmental impact. Quite apart from noise and poisonous diesel fumes, they bring with them the fly-overs, the industrial estates and the standardised street furniture that together change a recognisable bit of Britain into an anonymous chunk of anywhere/nowhere. So it makes sense to limit that impact by limiting road expansion. And we certainly don't have to apply the same naff design rules to all our other roads. Let's accept that there's a hierarchy of road types in this country, and - for goodness' sake - let's leave the little ones alone. I, for one, want to be able to continue my time travelling.
David Landers
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