1964: The Central London Service Deck

Many people know about the London Ringways plan - the ill-fated project to build four concentric rings of motorway in London, connected by radial expressways to allow traffic to race at 70mph directly through to the West End and beyond.

When the plans were very much a going concern in the 1960s, transport planners worried about one thing - what would happen to all this extra car traffic once it was off the motorways? The system was designed to feed traffic into London efficiently - but once in the central area it would be dumped onto existing streets which would hardly be able to cope.

The seminal 1963 report "Traffic in Towns", written by Sir Colin Buchanan, promoted the famous concept of segregating traffic from pedestrians. Now, we can see the Buchanan Report as the progenitor of the 70s obsession with bleak pedestrian overpasses and subways, snaking around uncompromising dual carriageways cutting through once-vibrant communities. But at the time it offered an ideal solution to a future where pedestrians and motorists would be seen to be in inevitable conflict.

London County Council's solution was to take things underground. 

They needed to cope with the two principal demands of motor traffic:

1. Private vehicles, used by people to commute in to London and to visit London's shops and theatres. Generally, these would be journeys that might previously have been carried out by tube, bus or rail (but we must remember that all three modes of public transport were seen as being in terminal decline in the sixties);.
2. Commercial vehicles, principally deliveries to shops.

Planners looked to the then-nascent plans for Brent Cross Shopping Centre and saw their answer to both problems.

Modern shopping centres have what's known as a "service deck", usually in a basement floor, into which delivery lorries will drive. Goods are delivered onto this deck and taken up by lift onto the shop floor - fully segregating deliveries from customers.

Shopping centres also have large customer car parks - in Brent Cross's case, allowing shoppers direct access from the North Circular.

The LCC's bold plan was to build such a service deck under central London - a fully segregated subterranean zone, accessible to lorries and other service vehicles. Wide underground roads would follow the lines of principal streets, with shops and businesses "buying in" to the scheme and, by so doing, ensuring the construction of direct access (usually by lift) from the service deck into their place of business.

The service deck was to be complemented by twelve large, satellite car parks, also underground, located just inside what is now London's inner ring road. Detailed plans were drawn up for car parks under Bloomsbury, Edgware Road, the bottom end of Upper Street in Islington, Aldgate, Hyde Park and Victoria. Sites were identified, but no planned carried out, for further car parks under Brixton, Peckham Rye, Blackheath and Finchley Road.

Commercial and private vehicles driving within the inner ring road would have to pay a congestion charge (following recommendations in the Smeed report), with much of the West End and the City being pedestrianised. Four monorail lines, running from Marble Arch to Liverpool Street, Euston to Waterloo, Elephant and Castle to London Bridge and Victoria to Angel Islington were originally mooted, but plans were swiftly abandoned due to the cost. Instead, a network of "park and ride" shuttle buses, on segregated guideways, would take people to and from the car parks. A reduced London Transport and Green Line bus service would serve the inner city and suburbs.

Discussions at the LCC were carried out in secret, and they were quietly abandoned in 1975, when the LCC's successor the Greater London Council (GLC) put the whole Ringways plan on ice. But minutes of meetings at plans were released shortly after the GLC's abolition, and while they weren't widely publicised at the time they reveal an intriguing possibility about what London might now have looked like, were it not for the oil crisis putting paid to the most optimistic projections on car usage. This extract is from a report to the LCC's Transportation Committee in 1964:

Inevitably there will be significant disruption while the work is being carried out. Moving London to a modern, car-based city will also entail sacrifices. The [[ Department considers that, principally, this project will entail the progressive closure of the London Underground, which comes into repeated conflict with the Service Deck plans at numerous points. This process must be planned carefully, and even with the Underground's declining passenger numbers, the new motorways and car parking facilities in central London must be brought on as soon as possible after closure of certain key Underground lines. Following detailed discussions with the Ministry of Transport, who have in principle agreed to these changes, as a loose guide we anticipate the following timetable:

Phase 1: Close of the Circle and District lines, and the Metropolitan line east and west of Baker Street: by June 1969
Phase 2: Closure of the Bakerloo line (Stanmore branch from Baker Street only): by January 1971
Phase 3: Closure of the Piccadilly line and the remainder of the Bakerloo line: by August 1974
Phase 4: Closure of the Edgware and Mill Hill East branches of the Northern line: by January 1976
Phase 5: Closure of the Metropolitan line north of Baker Street and the Central line east of Bethnal Green: by March 1977

The plan envisages retention of the core route of the Central line, the new Victoria line, the Bakerloo line and parts of the Northern line, none of which are in current conflict with the Service Deck plans. It is recommended that the Ministry of Transport be advised that further planning for the construction of the Fleet Line will be unnecessary.

It is recommended that the LCC review the position in 1980 to consider whether the continued operation of this vestigial underground railway network is financially viable or necessary thereafter.

Transportation Committee, London County Council, 17 April 1964 

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