Britain was behind the U.S. but ahead of the Continent in its plans for "motorways." In addition to a handful of major intercity motorways, the early 1960s saw a slew of plans for radial and ring roads in and around the major cities. Many of these plans, like their Continental counterparts, emerged in response to growing dismay at traffic-choked city centers.
The Buchanan report of 1963 promoted a widespread consensus that the growth in automotive traffic had to be planned for, preferably by finding channels for it to flow smoothly through the cities. Traffic planners concluded that the solution was urban motorways. But by late in the decade there was a dramatic shift in opinion.
The most celebrated case was London. On the very day of its establishment as a new metropolitan government in 1965, the Greater London Council (GCL) announced plans for a "motorway box" around central London to collect and distribute traffic from existing roads as well as from the new radial motorways soon to connect London to the rest of Britain.
At first the plans were popular.
Indeed, in 1967 a campaign in favor of speedier motorway construction helped the opposition Conservative Party oust the Labour GLC government that had launch the project.
What ensued was instead an ever-more-heated controversy, peaking in the early 1970s.
In addition to suspecting that any relief from traffic congestion would be too paltry to justify the enormous cost of the roads, residents of inner London (most of whom did not own cars) saw little benefit in roads designed to make it easier for suburbanites to drive in and out.
Those whose homes stood in the path of the proposed roads joined forces with housing advocates convinced that the need to respond to London's housing shortage trumped a roads program that would destroy thousands of dwellings.
More outrage than applause greeted the one section of the motorway box that was built, the elevated Westway that carried traffic in to Paddington.
Upon its opening in 1970, pictures of speeding cars a few feet from upper story bedroom windows proved to be very bad publicity for the rest of the project.