Master Plan 1970

A vision of transport in the new town of Milton Keynes

Master Plan 1970

On Thursday, March 19, 1970, The Wolverton and North Bucks Express newspaper, issued a supplement giving details of the proposed final Master Plan for the development of the new town of Milton Keynes. Contained within the supplement were some items on futuristic developments as envisioned at the time. Three of these are reproduced below – any reference to names in the first are entirely fictitious.

Getting To Work 1990 Style

Dick Jones is an electronics engineer at one of the big factories near the M1 at Newport Pagnell. He, his wife and two children live in a nice house, 24 Eskan Close, in East Coffee Hall with a dog, a boat and two cars. Dick has read the facsimile transmission of the morning newspaper at breakfast. The Milton Keynes radio announcer has warned that it is 9am so he’d better be off.He gets the car out of the garage and within two minutes he is out of Eskan Close and at the main road intersection. After waiting for four cars to pass he joins the stream of traffic.After a mile, he turns right and after nine minutes on the main road network, there is his exit point ahead. A short drive along another local road and he turns into the industrial estate and the factory car park. Even on such a busy morning the total time taken from front door to clocking in is just 15 minutes.That’s about average for all the car driversat the firm.

Dick’s mate, John, prefers to travel by bus. His journey has taken 24 minutes. There was the four minute walk to the bus stop at the activity centre.A couple of minutes to wait for a No. 24 to come along and then a 12 minute bus ride to the industrial estate.

Hold Tight Kids! Mum’s Out With a Shopping Buggy

Small electric vehicles – something like golf course buggies -that can be used by mothers with small children, or elderly people on shopping trips on the city’s quiet roads. This is an idea that has the backing of Mrs Margaret Durbridge, a member of the Corporation. She claims such a buggy will be slow, easy to run, easy to park and inexpensive to tax and insure. Lord Campbell, too, thinks it a very attractive plan. “Instead of spending a lot of money on escalators you can have some small piece of equipment that you can sit on and drive or push around with the shopping and the children on,” he says. “It will be particularly useful in this sort of planned city” adds Mrs Durbridge. “In an existing city it would not be a lot of use, because you would soon get snarled up in the traffic.”

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