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MOTOR
'VOLUME 121 No, 3119 MAY 28, 1965
Town Hall Age
-D ATES offices have not the best of images. For many they Pk comprise the only contact with the local town hall. Not surprisingly, local government is often relegated to that negative sphere of life full of injunctions, restrictions and demands for payment.
'In fairness, local government could well claim that such an image is unwarranted. Because the local town hall is often the only point of contact with the public for the implementation of an ever-widening stream of legislation, it is inevitable that it would seem to be the nigger in the woodpile where public liberty is concerned.
But whatever the imageāfor better or worse----local government will enter more and more into our lives no matter how often central government changes its complexion. And in the process transport will be vitally affected.
Allied to the expanding activities of local government there is already discernible a change in emphasis from a negative, albeit advisory, role to a more positive approach to the solution of current problems. The recent appointment of a Director of Highways and Transportation to the Greater London Council is indicative of this trend, as is the scope of the appointment. It is no less than providing a focus for the co-ordination of all transport within a city, the building of the necessary highways and responsibility for traffic management and policy. Moreover, it seems inevitable that .a similar overall approach to urban traffic problems will follow in the provinces.
In this changing role of local government, it is vitally important to road transport that it also should take a more positive approach in its contact with local government and in its insistence on being represented at the highest levels in diScussions on future policy.